Wednesday, December 17, 2008
At the conclusion of last spring’s baseball season at Transylvania University, catcher John Ashby removed his mask for the final time and since has strapped on a headset.
Ashby, who graduated from Madisonville-North Hopkins in 2005, hung up his cleats following his junior season after enduring years of pain from nagging sports injuries and now works as a play-by-play announcer for Transylvania.
During his final days as a high school player, Ashby suffered his initial injury against Christian County – one that would come to follow him the rest of his career.
“I was standing in front of home plate and I got kind of taken out at the plate and my knee stuck into the ground,” Ashby said. “I ended up tearing my MCL and meniscus and broke my tibia.”
Many schools that recruited Ashby backed off after the injury and he eventually went to Oakland City University (Ind.) before transferring to Transylvania.
Once with the Pioneers, Ashby’s injuries continued to plague his ability to play on a daily basis. That’s when Transylvania’s sports information director Glenn Osborne made a suggestion for him to get involved behind the scenes.
“When I was hurt, I would sit by him and he would do live stats or whatever and I would sit by him and help him out,” Ashby said. “They wanted me to stay and do stuff in athletics because I’ve been around it, but I wasn’t real sure how it would go, going from playing to the broadcast booth, but it’s been a pretty smooth transition, and I don’t miss it like I thought I would being around it like I am.”
Since the beginning of the Pioneer basketball season, Ashby, a sports information assistant, has been providing play-by-play and color for Transylvania’s live video feed system, which is provided free through its athletics Web site.
The quality of the video typically depends on the user’s Internet capability, Ashby said.
“We basically just do it like any other commentator you would see on TV,” he said.
Getting behind the mic was not too difficult of a situation for Ashby, who said attending many athletic events over his life made him comfortable to take on the job.
“I would go to the games probably anyways, but it’s just
kind of helped me stay with it,” he said.
Ashby’s broadcast debut did not come without its share of mishaps though, which later helped his confidence during his true first airing.
“Actually, the first game that we did, the guy who set it up forgot to plug the Internet in, so the live feed didn’t go through, so it was kind of a practice you could say,” he said. “We had that game where nobody heard us, but the next game it was pretty easy after that because we had one game to practice.”
One player Ashby does not have a hard time obtaining useful information on is Brock Jones, who formerly starred at North and rooms with Ashby.
“It’s pretty neat because I played basketball with him growing up and pretty much been around him my entire life,” Ashby said. “I guess I get a kind of inside track on the information. It helps me out before games. He’ll come home and talk about what they did in practice or who’s hurt, this and that. I can kind of talk about that when I’m on the air.”
In addition to providing play-by-play for the men’s and women’s basketball teams, Ashby said he hopes to provide feeds for Pioneer baseball games “if we can get it set up and rolling,” he said.
When Ashby graduates, he said he plans to get involved with coaching and hopes to join his former coach Scott Vance’s staff at North.
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