PREPARATION AND SPORTS BROADCASTING

Preparation is the most crucial element of sports broadcasting. The sports broadcaster must have information at his disposal to draw upon, either by quick reference or through memorization. Thorough preparation involves the development of spotting boards, a visual reference tool which instantly provides key information on vital statistics and information at a glance. As a play-by-play announcer, it is imperative to have the information at your fingertips when you need it. Information from the spotting boards should come from team websites, newspapers, discussions with players and coaches, game notes, stat packs, and media guides.

Preparation for a broadcast involves reading everything available on the teams. It is advisable to research everything, right down to the player's favorite foods. By the time the game starts, the goal is to know everything there is to know. Preparation involves active learning- note taking, reading, and index cards, for which you can include additional material, such as facts, quotes, and miscellaneous statistics not covered by the spotting boards. Now let's take a tour of what a typical spotting board looks like and how they get composed.

These boards are created using poster board which I purchase at Staples Office Supply. The boards come in packages of three (I buy the largest size, which is 14 x 22). I always use white poster board for my boards, because it then allows me to create the board in color for easy visual identifications. Every color you see represents a code for each bit of information, which allows for easy visual recognition.

These large size boards are perfect for hockey and especially football, since the rosters are expanded and there is more information to deal with. I use a smaller board for basketball, since the rosters are much smaller. I typically use a smaller board for baseball as well. A word of caution- when using spotting boards for baseball, always be prepared to update information on a daily basis.

I use a hockey example here, but when you do spotting boards for other sports, obviously there are different stats to track- each sport has different stats. For example, in baseball, one could track home run trends, RBI trends, hitting streaks, strikeout data, and the like. Basketball may involve free throw stats, rebounding and three point stats, turnovers, etc. In football, you can track touchdowns, rushing and receiving data, field goals, first down conversion percentages, and so on. If you would like to see other samples of spotting boards I have used in other sports, please E-mail me at jleahy14@comcast.net .

These blank poster boards are very inexpensively priced. You can get them at Staples (in the art section) for about three dollars a pack. I create a new board for every broadcast, as this helps me with the retention process. Writing info down is an excellent memory aid! When I do boards for my college hockey coverage at Merrimack, I devote one whole day to each team- my thought process goes something like this- when we play the following Friday after a Saturday night game, I take Sunday off (and sometimes Monday) and begin work on Tuesday. I devote all day Tuesday to our opponent. It takes me about four to five hours to complete the board. On Wednesday I will begin work on our team, Merrimack. I simply need to update the info from the previous game's board, so it's a little bit quicker in that regard. That process takes roughly three hours. Then, on Thursday, I do a third board covering general information like standings and statistical leaders. I'll typically do Hockey East on one side and NHL on the other. When we play on Tuesday after a Saturday night game, I will get to work immediately the next day, Sunday, on our opponents, and then I'll work on our team on Monday. I use Sharpie © colored markers in the course of developing my boards.

In addition to the spotting board topics you see here, my current spotting boards for hockey have been updated since this original version to also include comparative team stats and individual goal breakdowns.

Special thanks go out to my father, John Leahy Sr., who was instrumental in helping me with this section of the site............ he took photographs of the board I provided for him and was a huge help in terms of giving me advice and guidance for this section. Dad, you are truly my inspiration. You mean the world to me. Thank you.

AN ACTUAL SPOTTING BOARD USED IN A BROADCAST

(Merrimack vs. Northeastern college hockey, Dec. 2-3, 2005)

Click on the appropriate numbered tab to learn about each section of the board.