Up in the Crow’s Nest, rising high above the stands, WSOU 89.5 FM sportscasters call games at Seton Hall University’s Walsh Gymnasium. This is where student staff like former station manager and one-time assistant sports director Spencer Gonzales get a vantage point like no other.

“We’ve been calling games there ever since I’ve been around and years before that,” Gonzales said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a better place to do play-by-play and color.”

The exclusive press box is a visual representation of WSOU Sports’ prevalence on SHU’s campus, where aspiring sports media professionals go to have their own taste of what it’s like under the lights. WSOU began broadcasting on 89.5 FM in 1948 and has been mostly student-run since then, blending a mix of SHU athletics’ coverage, a heavy metal music format, and news reporting.

According to Chris Heite, WSOU’s current station manager, there are about 100 students on the WSOU staff overall at the time of publication, 30 of those being on the sports staff. Sportscasters at the station have managed to consistently find success calling games over decades of covering SHU sports, getting professional experience that sets them up for careers in sports media post-grad.

One of the biggest reasons for the station’s sports coverage continuing to flourish is its dedicated staff, made up of students who start building up their resume as early as their freshman year.

“While freshmen can’t walk in and immediately get play-by-play at Madison Square Garden, it’s all about trusting the process,” said Lauren Reese, WSOU’s sports director. “It’s the work you put in on every podcast, every beat-writing assignment, every freelance article that works up to your first play-by-play and so on. It’s basically all about what you put in is what you get out.”

Reese added that usually by a student’s sophomore or junior year they can join the crews to broadcast basketball games if that’s their goal. “Everyone’s path is different,” she said.

Michael Bellifemini, a former sportscaster at WSOU, said that this is what makes WSOU Sports and SHU unique as a whole.

“You might be at another school just waiting, counting your days until you’re [calling] a big game, until you’re a senior, but we’re throwing students out and trusting them early,” Bellifemini said. “So I think that’s a big opportunity that we’re given at the station here.”

When it comes to Division I sports media programs, many may think of Syracuse or Arizona State University. But WSOU’s long-standing tradition continues to draw in students, despite flying under the radar for some.

“When I talk to alums, or even when I see the current students, there’s this real sense of something being handed down, or the sense that our current students in the station are standing on the shoulders of those who came before them,” said Dr. Bryan Crable, founding dean of the College of Human Development, Culture, and Media (CHDCM, the college that houses WSOU).

Bob Ley, the founder of SHU’s Center for Sports Media and ESPN’s longest-tenured anchor after 40 years with the network, served as WSOU’s sports director his sophomore year and programming director for part of his junior year. Two more WSOU alums, Bardia Shah-Rais, vice president of production at FOX Sports, and John Fanta, play-by-play broadcaster for NBC Sports, said they count Ley as their inspiration to join WSOU.

“Seton Hall is unique in a number of ways, but one of the ways certainly is that through the alumni, the affinities that grow, and the friendships that grow aren’t necessarily functions of class years, but they’re functions of expertise or interest,” Ley said. “And that’s why I’ve got friends throughout the thread of the decades, but we all have WSOU in common.”

This sense of mentorship is something Fanta said is one of the “coolest” things about connections made at WSOU.

“Bardia gave me an internship opportunity at FOX Sports after my junior year of college,” Fanta said. “He said the first day I interned for him, ‘nobody wants to work with a jerk.’ And you know, that’s the Seton Hall way, but that’s also his way. That was a pirate paying it forward for another pirate.”

Internships like Fanta’s do not come without hard work behind the scenes, though. According to Reese, both men and women’s basketball is covered over the FM airwaves. While the station also covers volleyball, baseball, and softball, those sports are primarily streamed online on the WSOU website and app.

Although the station covers men’s basketball, what WSOU’s staff arguably takes the most pride in is being the flagship station for SHU women’s basketball, Reese said. They are the only station that is primarily dedicated to the women’s team.

“The relationship that we have established with Seton Hall women’s basketball is so special,” Reese said. “We’re allowed to travel with them for their away games. They provide us hotels, meals, information about the games, game notes —anything you could think of regarding how to enhance our broadcast, Seton Hall women’s basketball does that for us.”

Matt Sweeney, a WSOU alum and associate athletics director for communications, is WSOU’s primary point of contact when it comes to arranging coverage for the station at women’s basketball games. He discussed the immense benefits of having WSOU students call the women’s games aside from just representing the university positively.

“That’s the really nice thing about WSOU traveling with the women, because they kind of get embedded with the team,” Sweeney said. “They hear the players chit chat on the plane. They hear it in the hotel. They’re getting to know the kids beyond just the basketball court. And I think that really helps them tell the story about our team, not just what’s happening on the court.”

Other than calling the games themselves, sportscasters at WSOU also host Hall Line, the station’s iconic basketball call-in show; Empire Sports Talk, which discusses all things New York-based sports; and Pirate Prime Time, where the staff focuses solely on SHU sports for whatever season is going on or whatever is coming up.

Many staff members at WSOU Sports have also traveled for big basketball games around the country, a memory Brian Henderson, a past assistant sports director, said will stick with him.

“I was doing color commentary for the men’s game at St John’s [last year],” Henderson said. “I mean, calling a basketball game at Madison Square Garden—it’s the world’s most famous arena. It does not get better than that…It feels so surreal because you’re up there in the press box where the Rangers GM usually sits.”

Some may question SHU’s practice of trusting such young students who are still learning with such high-profile games, but Chris Aurilio, director of production/facilities in CHDCM and head of the professional staff at WSOU, spoke to students’ professionalism.

“The credentials [for games] are kind of interesting, because I don’t usually have to step in that often. Our students are so responsible,” Aurilio said. “They’re usually able to go to these outlets, and they have the resources we’ve provided them with to be able to go and request this stuff.”

He added, “They’re very, very hard working and talented.”

These credentials come into play when WSOU students cover professional teams like the New York Red Bulls and New Jersey Devils.

According to Reese, WSOU is in press row with all the other news outlets for these teams. Rather than calling these games on the airwaves, coverage for these teams involves writing an article, posting on social media, and recording podcasts.

“For the Red Bulls, you get to go to the player locker room and post-game press conferences,” Reese said. “For the Devils, we can only do the head coach press conference. Both are still such surreal experiences because this market is incredible when it comes to sports and its coverage.”

One way the student staff coordinates all their coverage successfully is working with WSOU’s adult staff, made up of three people including Aurilio.

“They [the adult staff] are great at deferring to us in a lot of scenarios where, you know, if they think we should go one way, and we strongly think we should go another, they’re very good with letting us run the station how we see fit…They’re great at really letting us have our vision with what we think WSOU should be,” Gonzales said.

The training involved in WSOU’s sports coverage is also part of why SHU trusts students to represent the university on a national scale, something that Fanta commended.

“I think that what we have is the training wheels on to help you through some of the bumps on the road,” he said. “You know you would fall if you didn’t have the training wheels on. And I think the WSOU experience—it’s riding a bike with those training wheels getting taken off eventually, and then you’re ready to ride that bicycle when you receive your diploma.”

Gonzales echoed the same sentiment, spotlighting the mentors within WSOU’s own staff.

“It’s very important to train people up right and to make sure that there’s a good management board and group of people to guide younger broadcasters through this,” he said. “I think that’s what makes WSOU so special is that if you are young and you have no idea what you’re doing, there’s always somebody to ask.”

This mentorship can turn into working relationships, Shah-Rais said.

“You don’t think it is, but really it’s building relationships, which is really like the foundation of this business—working under pressure, communicating effectively in a timely manner, and relying on others to kind of execute the shared vision,” he said. “I don’t think it’s just FOX Sports, it’s probably any other business that those principles are applied.”

Ley suggested SHU students take advantage of benefits like these at WSOU.

“Young folks today on campus have the same opportunities I did,” he said. “Take advantage of them, because they may not pay off tomorrow, but they’re going to pay off down the road.”

As WSOU’s first female sports director since 1988, Reese summed up why WSOU Sports students care so much about their work representing their fellow Pirates. “I think we’re all here for a reason, and it’s to be in this industry,” she said. “So there’s this subconscious awareness to the fact that we want to make everything as great as it possibly can be, to better ourselves as sportscasters, but also to benefit the entire station— to benefit WSOU Sports.”