Announcers Anyone?

[Rich Wong]

Play-by-play announcing is one of the hardest jobs I know in FIRST.
Announcers got to have stamina, wit, personality, and a good altitude. Small mistakes are embarrassing and can be costly. When you are tired, it becomes immediately obvious to everyone unless you have good articulation control.
A job I can’t do if my life depends on it!
This year our rookie announcer Mike start announcing at the Thursday practice rounds in 2003. He got the chance because he just asked us.
In 2004 Mike was co-announcer at our State FLL Tournament and co-announced the 2004 NYC Regional. Fortunately, we also got lucky when Andy Grady volunteered to help on Saturday. Mike was losing his voice by then.
I only can speak for our regional; we are always looking for new volunteers for the pit, practice rounds, elimination rounds and final rounds announcer.
So just ask the volunteer coordinator or director of the regionals, you never know where the opportunities are. How do you get to know them? Volunteer and corner them at the volunteer cafeteria!

[Ken Leung]

Originally Posted by Rich Wong

A job I can’t do if my life depends on it!

I will second that. I doubt I will have any articulation control at anytime during any competition. It is always great working with the announcers at the scoring table. I admire them a lot of doing such an important job in front of so many people. They don't get enough credit for what they do. They are basically one of the few people who is going to make the competition look either really good, or really boring.

Volunteering for FIRST is a rather interesting experience. On one hand, because FIRST needs as much volunteers as they can get, almost anyone can volunteer at a competition. On the other hand, FIRST has a certain standard on the quality of its competitions, so they need experienced folks who've done it before to fill in some of the important positions. Announcing is one of them. Field supervisor and scorekeeper is another.

It really helps to show your skills before you volunteer yourself for a job such as being an announcer. It also helps to talk to the people who makes the decision for the competition about it and make sure they know to keep you in mind when assigning jobs.

When it comes down to it, it depend on a lot of factors. How many people have volunteered already, how well the regional committee chairperson / regional director knows you, how well you are at your job, how much experience you have in FIRST, etc etc etc.

There is no certainty to it, however. Sometimes, popular events like IRI are filled with requests to be volunteers, and they may not have enough jobs to give out. Sometimes, for event like Cal Games, we can get as much volunteers as we can get, so we let as many people who wants to volunteer come help as they can, but we make sure we try to make sure we train the volunteers to be real good.

Soooo... If you are going to an off season competition, you should e-mail the person organizing the event. Chances are, you will get some time to practice being an announcer at one or two event. Then you keep doing more and more, and start talking to people about who to talk to regarding volunteering at competitions, and you keep asking higher and higher up the chain until you hit the one person who makes the decision, which is usually the regional director or regional committee chairperson.

By the way, as long as you are good, I am sure they will manage to get to you ;-).

[George A.]

So far the unanimous (sp?) result is that I need to 1) get connections and 2) practice at off seasons comps. Well I'm happy to say that I did my FIRST announcing job at PARC. The gracious staff there let me call the plays for 20 or so matches. The first few were a little weird, but I really did get the hang of it, and have decided that I really want to do this. Any suggestions on where to take this next?

[Erin Rapacki]

I was impressed with your announcing skills at PARC, I definately sensed that you had promise. I'd say, keep practicing and if you can... get tips from the pro's, and think of different 'transitioning' words to use (ex: you used 'meanwhile' a lot, try coming up with more phrases).

Yup, keep stepping in at offseasons... and maybe sign up as a trainee for a Regional next year.


Did you like my head-ref pencil twirl?

[Joshua May]

I'd just like to wish you lots of luck on your announcing career. From what it wounds like, you did a great job at PARC and you seem to be the kind of guy that could do a good job out there.