THURSDAYS 7AM

Salwa Khan

I’m here with Jarred Robinson, KWVH sportscaster extraordinaire. Jarred is the voice you hear doing the play-by-play of the Wimberley High School Texan football team on Friday nights. He also does play-by-play of volleyball and other Texan sports. Jarred hosts The Danger Zone part of the Wimberley Wake-Up Club on Thursday mornings from 7-9AM. He and Texan Football Coach Doug Warren host the KWVH Coaches Show on Mondays from 6:30 to 7PM. He is a very busy man!

Jarred Robinson
I think I've I think I've broadcast every single game on KWVH except one. I've broadcast games for the Wimberley Texans for six or seven years now. I used to do that on KOWO 104.1 Sun Radio out of Dripping Springs/Austin. When KWVH got the contract from the school district, I came here.

Salwa Khan
Let’s get a little background about you.

Jarred Robinson
My Mom and Dad moved here from Katy (TX) when I was in third grade. I was seven or eight years old. My father took a job at Chuck Nash Chevrolet in San Marcos. I graduated from Wimberley High School in the year 2000 and went to college at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, and got a little bit smarter. I met my wife there and we moved to Kyle in 2005 and then built our first house in Wimberley in 2008. I grew up here. The Central Texas world is mine!

Salwa Khan

Do you have children in Wimberley schools?



Jarred Robinson

I have a daughter who's nine years old. She is in fourth grade at Jacobs Well Elementary.

Salwa Khan
How did you get into radio and come to KWVH? 



Jarred Robinson 

I played baseball for Coach Dane Saucier here. He was our head baseball coach, and they needed someone to broadcast baseball games for what the time was (Sun radio station) KOWO 104.1 that was doing all the sports for Wimberley.

Greg Weeks had contacted me via a recommendation from Coach Saucier, who is the offensive coordinator and golf coach for Wimberley. The radio station contacted me and I was the color analyst for the first year for a young man named Sam Eisenberg, who is now actually on the Boerne Greyhound baseball staff. Sam did play-by-play. I did color and that was what started it for me.

Salwa Khan

What does the color analyst do at a sports event?

Jarred Robinson

Play-by-play is basically explaining what you're seeing so that the people listening can get a visualization of what's going on. The color analyst side of it is giving you a reason why they did that or what it was that they did.
For example, in football, the play-by-play guy will say, Hey, passed on to the outside, went 10-yards and was pushed out of bounds. The color guy will come in and say, they went with that check-down pass because the safety over the top had rolled down, the bottom side wasn't open, so he kicked it out to the top. So, the play-by-play told you what happened, the color guy told you why it happened. I did that with baseball the first year. The next year they asked me to stay and do football.
An unbelievable man who taught me a lot of what I know with sports broadcasting is Mike Blackwell. He was with KOWO 104.1 as well. He was the play-by-play for football, and I did color analyst for him for two years. The second year I took over baseball play-by-play. I was doing baseball all on my own and then color for football.
That second or third year is when the broadcast rights came up and at that point KWVH took over for Sun Radio. The school board got together, and their decision was to go with KWVH instead of Sun Radio.This will be the third or fourth season here on KWVH that I've done it for them.
Darren Masur actually was probably the first guy who said, hey, we want you here to do this. You're already doing it, which I was, but for KOWO at the time. You're the perfect person to do it. You know all the kids, you’ve coached all the kids. I'm involved with the Wimberley Youth Sports Association here. I was the president for nine years of the Association and I still run the little girl softball program. I coached most of the kids in baseball. Anyway, it was a very good fit.
The product that KWVH has been able to create and put out in the past three to four years that we've been doing it, it's a better overall product. There's been partnerships that have been created with sports marketing senses, with the school district on bringing young men and women in who want to be part of broadcasting games and sports broadcasting. It's been a fantastic partnership with the Wimberley Independent School District (WISD).
Darren (Masur) was probably the main factor in me coming over (to KWVH). Once that happened, I got the opportunity to meet Brach. He's irreplaceable to me. Brach is invaluable for what he does. After meeting Brach the first year and working directly with him, it was like, we are going to be able to take it from what we did with KOWO, which was a great product, but now Brach is going to take this thing to the next level. Then circle in Mike (Crusham) did some great things and then circle in Tim (Kiesling) and Tim has taken it to levels above that.
What we do here is amazing work. Not only for the sports programming. I have other shows. that we do. Just from a community standpoint in what this radio station brings to nonprofit organizations, community events, emergency preparedness stuff. The value of this radio station to the community and the community to the radio station is something that didn't exist prior to that. It's been a good partnership and been fun to be a part of it.

Salwa Khan

What equipment is required when you do the play-by-play of WISD sports?

Jarred Robinson

I have mobile gear that I take with me to games. It's in several big boxes and we'll go set up. Believe it or not, there's very little radio equipment that we need to broadcast the game.
A couple of years ago we came into a partnership with Dave Campbell's Texas Football. This will be our third year now. Everybody knows Dave Campbell's Texas Football in high school sports. The high school Bible basically is the Dave Campbell's Texas Football magazine. I worked with them in the past and prior to coming here. They approached me and said, we want to be part of Wimberly football.
Doug Warren, the (WISD) head coach and Athletic Director and I, sat down with the Dave Campbell's guys and they asked, could we use KWVH's audio for our video broadcast? So every Friday night, our show goes out on 94. 3 FM, it goes out on the KWVH app, and it goes out on KWVH. org. The other spot it goes out to is Dave Campbell's Texan Live. It's video.

Salwa Khan

They are televising the game with your play-by-play audio?

Jarred Robinson

That's correct. They get our audio, which is instrumental, and I think undervalued. When you're talking about our sponsors (underwriters), part of our broadcast sponsorship package also goes out to Dave Campbell's Texan Live. I can tell you the numbers for Dave Campbell's Texan Live. It's a nationwide organization. Our sponsors go out on it. Our broadcast goes out on it. All of our people go out on it.
It's a great partnership for this radio station. I give it back to Tim and Brach in the sense that what they do is amazing; equipment-wise and everything.
Tim and I had this conversation the other day. We talk about once a week, and he asks what can I do for you? That's always the question that he ends with. I'm like, Hey man, we've got great equipment. We got this. He tells me the other day, we're going to make it better. I say Tim, I don't know how we're going to make it better!
Tim and Brach both see the details. They do all the hard stuff. Mine's the easy stuff and fun stuff. People stop me and say Oh, it's great broadcast! It's that I sound good because of the sound that they put out, and yes, there's something for the lingo and the knowledge (I provide) that goes out with it. But if it sounds terrible, it sounds terrible.

Salwa Khan

I want to go back to Dave Campbell's Texan Live televised games. Do they have cameras set up in the stadium?

Jarred Robinson

They do, yes. They have a camera that's set up in the stadium, and there's a camera person there. Wimberley has a broadcast communications department at Wimberley High School. They have three in-house cameras that they use at the stadium. I take that signal, and I plug it into the Dave Campbell's Texan Live computer so there's multiple camera angles on any Wimberley home game. If it's a road game and they don’t have multiple cameras, it's a single camera operated deal at that point.

Salwa Khan

Do people have a subscription to Dave Campbell’s Texan Live?

Jarred Robinson

That’s correct. I think it's $9. 99 a month for Dave Campbell's and you get the Dave Campbell's football magazine and other things. If somebody goes and pays for a subscription you don't just get Wimberley, you get every school that they have on their Dave Campbell's Texan live team. You'll get teams from all over the state.
It's a big deal for our sponsors (underwriters). They get our platform which is incredible and another platform where audio goes out, but video goes out as well. It’s another way for our sponsors to see a return on their investment in the radio station.

Salwa Khan

How did you learn to do play-by-play?

Jarred Robinson
Osmosis. I had no clue how to do it when I started. Luckily for me, baseball was the first thing I did. I know the game of baseball very well. I played it, so baseball came easily for me to explain and to do the color. I played football as well, but it was not as fluid for me to do football.
Mike Blackwell was the play-by-play when I started with KOWO and I learned a lot from him. In fact, Mike still does games to this day with other radio stations. I picked up a lot of things from him. I've created my own as I've gone on, but it was trial by fire.
It was get up there and stumble and fall, and get back up and stumble and fall until you learn how to do it. You develop your own craft, and way of doing things. I never went to school for broadcasting, so it was something that was new and exciting.

Salwa Khan
It seems like a difficult thing to do because you're having to say something all the time.

Jarred Robinson
It can be difficult, especially with high scoring games that we're winning. You're filling a lot of airtime with as many facts as you can get. The first thing I do is facts, facts that are true to what this team is, whether that's volleyball, football, basketball, softball, baseball. If a grandmother is listening and her grandson is playing in a football game, she wants to know as much information as possible.
The other side of it is fun. Make it fun. Make them giggle every now and then. I have a good personality in the sense that I've always been kind of the class clown, so you can make it fun, make it interesting. At the same time, allow them to have a bit of excitement too, because anybody can sit there and just talk on the microphone and say, it's a catch on the 10 and pushed out of bounds. But, catch on the 10, pushed out of bounds and almost took his foot off! You add little things like that into it. Facts are number one, making sure that your broadcast is true, and then two, add fun to it because that's why people listen.

Salwa Khan
Do you have to study the teams to know the names of the players and what their position is and so on?

Jarred Robinson
That is without a doubt the hardest part. Volleyball is probably the most difficult to get right because it's a very quick moving sport. On the plus side, there's only six girls on the court.
I could go out and do a volleyball game if I was just doing Wimberly today and I've only watched two matches, because I know the girls on our side. The opposing team is a different world. This week Wimberley is playing Canyon Lake. I've been watching video for two days, off and on. By the time the game starts, I've probably got eight hours of watching video, writing down notes. In football, it is more problematic because sometimes there are four, five, six wide receivers. There's only three on the field. Which three are those? I've got binoculars on trying to figure out who they are. And I've got a headset and I'm also talking at the same time.

Salwa Khan
Do you have somebody helping you with that?

Jarred Robinson
I have a color person who's in the booth with me, but their job isn't really to, to help me. I don't have a spotter. Once you get into college and NFL broadcasting, they do bring people in that have binoculars and there's a big chart in front of you and they actually run their finger down and say 16, 9 and 5 are the wide receivers. But in high school, you get what you get. Most of the time, the press boxes aren't big enough for that either. You get two or three people in a press box and it's like a sardine can.
Knowing the players is the number one thing as far as the game itself. The factual information is knowing people and what positions they play, are they a junior, a sophomore? If I can get any stats on them at all, like number 11 is John Doe and Doe's got 11 catches for 722 yards. They love hearing that stuff. People like hearing those factual things that you can give out. That increases people's trust in your broadcast, which is the number one thing. Names are a big one. We are in high school sports and kids like hearing their name and parents love hearing their kid’s names.

Salwa Khan
When you are doing play-by-play, how many hours is that from beginning to end?

Jarred Robinson
With a football game typically I get there 4 30 to 5pm. We’re testing mics, testing equipment to make sure everything's working. I go on air at seven and the game's usually over by about 10pm. When I leave, it's usually 11pm because it's tear down, break down equipment and all the other stuff.
We've got Greg Weeks, my sideline reporter who walks on the side. I had two color commentators last year, Jordan Weeks, Greg’s son, who graduated from Wimberley. He was a quarterback for us and went on to play college football at the University of Texas, San Antonio. He was the quarterback there. And then Cade Stoever, who played here, and also played at the University of Texas, San Antonio. He was a wide receiver down there. His brother, Cody, is the quarterback for the Texans right now. Both of them do a really good job.
Jordan really knows the game from being a quarterback in division one college football. He’s able to read what defenses are doing. Cade, being a wide receiver is able to tell routes and play calls.

Salwa Khan
Your sideline reporter is out on the field?

Jarred Robinson
That's correct. We utilize Greg for a sense of what's the team feeling right now? What's the temperature down there? I might say, Hey, Greg, a big play down there, a lot of excitement. Tell me what the mood is down there. In a radio sense, you're throwing it down to somebody that's in the crowd and his mic is going to pick up the excitement from the kids. It's added a bunch.

Salwa Khan
Let's go back to The Danger Zone on Thursday mornings from 7 to 9AM. Is that a sports show or is it morning wake up?

Jarred Robinson
There is sports involved with it because there's four people that are there with me. I'll go back a little bit. It started with Tim Keisling and me. It was a way for us to sit down and talk about nothing really. Tim slowly worked his way out of it.Then Pat Lowry, a friend of mine, came in. Now Annie Bolton, and Chance Crowder are there along with Pat Lowry,

Salwa Khan
Are these people friends of yours?

Jarred Robinson
They are friends of mine. We usually have topics of the day and we try to get interactive with the listeners And we've had we've had some awesome call-ins where people called in from Houston or Beaumont or one time, from Germany
We started the top three things, like your top three one-tank of fuel trips. You’ve got one tank of gas. Where are you going? We morphed that into musical stuff. What's your top music from the eighties or nineties, rock or country?

Salwa Khan
Do you also do some sports?

Jarred Robinson
We talk about the sports, like the Texans are playing and we’ll talk about Wimberley Youth Sports. All of us have had kids that went through that or are still part of it. Chance is a coach in Wimberley Youth Sports, I still run the softball program there.so we'll talk about youth sports a lot. We have a lot of interviews. Greg Bonewald, the Superintendent for the High School will come in on the first day of school. He talked about what's the state of the school district?

Salwa Khan
And then there’s the Coaches show on Mondays at 6:30PM.

Jarred Robinson
The Monday show is very sports specific. Coach Doug Warren and I sit down and talk about what happened at last week's game for the first 15-minutes.The next 15 minutes we prep for this week's game. It's a 30 minute show, but it's a good show for people to listen to that want 30-minutes of Doug Warren and me sitting down talking about everything Texan football.

Salwa Khan
Is it challenging keeping up with your different shows?

Jarred Robinson
I will say sometimes it's a bit overwhelming, but we love it. I mean, it's a blast. The number one thing that keeps me continuing to do it is the community and being involved with the community. If there is a challenge, I would say that Thursday morning show is my biggest one because you're forced to create your own content. What are we going to talk about? But we make fun of each other and it is a fun show.

Salwa Khan 
What are the rewards of doing these shows?

Jarred Robinson

It’s being part of something that is meaningful and impactful, because we're not in it for the money. It's a volunteer radio station.
Look at a family where the brother graduated from Wimberley High School four or five years ago, and he is now serving this country overseas. But his little brother's playing here in Wimberley and his grandparents are somewhere else. For them to literally be able to pick up their phone, hit an application and hear the game.
When that brother who’s in Afghanistan calls and talks to his little brother and says, hey man, I listened to your Friday night game and you did great. That's the impactful side of it. That's the meaningful part.
What we're doing means something to people and to be a part of that is what I get out of it the most. The volleyball team's motto a couple of years ago was row the boat and when everybody is rowing the oars in the same direction, that equals a lot of speed down the river.
Everybody that's part of KWVH, they all row the boat, and this thing is going to levels that people can't even imagine with Tim and Brach and everybody that's part of it. It's incredible to be a part of it

Salwa Khan

Thank you.