Student broadcaster and senior journalism and media studies major Brian Kice has called over 200 Linfield sporting events for more than three years, becoming a welcoming, familiar face and voice for many around campus. He is sad to say goodbye to Linfield, but glad that he chose to study there.

“It is bittersweet. I think it is funny because I look back on it and I can still remember scripting out my first open, and that is something that I have done over 200 times now,” said Kice. “It was 400 words. I got through it in twenty-five seconds and did not know what to say, and those are the kinds of things that I look back on and smile about.”

Kice would love to return someday to see how the broadcast and sports networks have changed. He believes that broadcasting at the Division III level was a stepping stone that offered him tremendous opportunity for growth as a beginner back in 2023.

He had approached his boss, broadcast operations coordinator Joe Stuart, to express interest in calling sports, and began that same week. Linfield has room for interested students to try their hand at calling one of its twenty-three sports, too many for Stuart to cover alone.

Kice believes that Division III is the place to be for up-and-coming broadcasters looking to make their mark on the industry. Joe Davis may now cover the World Series on Fox, but he began at the Division III level like several other professional broadcasters.

Last summer, Kice worked for a summer collegiate baseball team in Knoxville, eastern Tennessee, after being offered the position by Linfield alumni and Knoxville Smokies broadcast operations assistant, Connor Nelson. While there, Kice broadcast from the Smokies booth and made great connections, building on the ones already made at Linfield.

Kice applied to nearly 50 teams for post-graduation jobs over the following months without success before contacting Nelson about a previously mentioned open position. He then landed a summer internship starting June 5th with the Knoxville Smokies, a well-known AA affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, by talking with Nelson and his boss over the phone.

“It was one of the easier jobs that I have gotten,” said Kice. “I think that is due to the connections that I have made here at Linfield and in eastern Tennessee.”

In ten years, he would love to be in a Major League broadcast booth, preferably the head play-by-play for a baseball team, though any sport would do as long as he was broadcasting. Ultimately, though, he wants a consistent job where he can choose which games he covers when, which should be the case once he has enough years under his belt.

The St. Louis Cardinals would be his top pick because of how often he saw them in sports as a kid, and calling the World Series would be ideal. He realized that broadcasting was the job for him back then, even imagining himself as a broadcaster watching the games.

For him, the deciding moment was the end of the eleventh inning of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, watching the Cardinals walk off the Texas Rangers. He will never forget what happened next: “[Dave] Freese hits it in the air to center,” said broadcaster Joe Buck. “We will see you tomorrow night.”

That legendary call inspired 11 year old Kice, who then told his dad he wanted to become a broadcaster and never looked back. He has always wanted to tell those stories, and he can by calling sports.

“The phrases, the terms, the silence. I think the silence is such a big part,” said Kice. “I tell a story to people who, if they had their eyes closed, could still paint a colored picture of the game in their head.”

His coverage means a lot to the many local student athletes, making him many new friends and motivating him to keep broadcasting.

“A lot of my friends are also my peers, but they understand and appreciate what I do for them,” said Kice. “And that is what makes this job so fun.”

Kice wants fellow students to know that broadcasting is less of a job and more of a paid opportunity to pursue a passion. People love sporting events, and he feels that the broadcast booth is just a new spot to watch and share the game from.

“So I really want students to realize how much fun it is to be on the sports network and to be behind a microphone and share those moments with other people and the connections that you can make with that,” said Kice. “But I hope that I have had some calls over the past three years and six months that have stuck out here and maybe will live on in the history of the school.”

If you want to learn more about his story, you can watch the full documentary about Brian Kice on The Linfield Review’s YouTube channel.