On the move, on the job for the next week

When your work is free-lance, it's good to be busy, and I'm fortunate enough to start one of my busiest weeks of the year today.

I'm flying to Pittsburgh Wednesday evening to start a stretch that will see me call four games in six days (Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday) and fly five different segments before returning to an airport for a second time. It's going to be intense, and it's going to be fun!

Our own Friday Night Lights on gorgeous evening at @wvuwomenssoccer vs @TexasTechSoccer! cc @catwhitehill4 pic.twitter.com/67t5LNxhmU

— Jonathan Yardley (@jtyardley) October 14, 2016

I start in my current season, college soccer, returning to the scene of the above vista to see the same game I called a year ago, West Virginia against Texas Tech on ESPNU, although I'm working with Kate Markgraf this year instead of Cat Whitehill. One ridiculously good defender and partner for another!

From there, I'll keep moving for the next week, possibly the longest I've ever been away from my daughter in her young life, to cover this set of games:

Upcoming broadcasts
Date	Game	Media	Partner
Oct. 19 5 pm ET	West Virginia vs. Texas Tech (NCAA women's soccer)	ESPNU	Kate Markgraf
Oct. 21 8 pm ET	Houston Rockets vs. Dallas Mavericks (NBA)	NBA League Pass VR	Viani / Rogondino
Oct. 22 6 pm ET	Auburn vs. LSU (NCAA women's soccer)	ESPNU	Cat Whitehill
Oct. 24 7:30 pm ET	Boston Celtics vs. New York Knicks (NBA)	NBA League Pass VR	Viani / Rogondino

It's a lot to prepare for, a lot of phone calls to squeeze in, and a lot of clothes to pack into one trip! But I intend to manage with a smile on my face, so check it out when you can.

VIDEO: Highlights from wild Cosmos win

I was added to the New York Cosmos broadcast team before the season began, but my first two broadcasts were both road games called from a local studio. On Friday night, I finally got to call a game from the team's new home at MCU Park on Coney Island in Brooklyn, and we had a blast!

My partner Friday was former US international Janusz Michallik, who I've met before and with whom I've hosted radio shows before. But we had never called a game together in person, and this was certainly end-to-end entertainment.

Most of us don't call six-goal thrillers every week, and the goals brought real quality as well. The full game broadcast is available via WatchESPN's archive for the next 30 days, and MSG has our post-game segment.

Here are the highlights from Friday night:




Also a quick look at either end of my commute:

Nice, easy commute: 28 stops to call @NYCosmos tonight. #NYCvPRFC pic.twitter.com/aLD9mNqz2O

— Jonathan Yardley (@jtyardley) June 16, 2017

Made it! Cosmos B on the undercard playing Dutch legends, main event to follow, on-air at 7.30pm. pic.twitter.com/96ym3AQyW1

— Jonathan Yardley (@jtyardley) June 16, 2017

From Buffalo to the Big Apple

I finished up my MAAC basketball slate with two trips to Buffalo in the last week, calling Canisius-Marist men on Feb. 20 and Canisius-Niagara women on Feb. 25 (open with one of my favorite analysts, Julianne Viani, pictured at right).

It was great to get a little more time in Buffalo and get good time with both local coaches - men's coach Jim Baron at the airport and women's coach Terry Zeh providing a clutch lunch recommendation.

On Friday morning, I had the ol' pre-dawn wake-up call and drive to the airport amid minor snow, which allowed for a great view of New York (and a common site for my work, Kaiser Stadium and Belson Stadium at St. John's) on the morning flight to La Guardia.

Plenty busy in the broadcasting and personal departments over the next month!

Late fall broadcasts in photos

After being unsure of what (if!) my schedule would look like after college soccer conference championships on Nov. 8, I was fortunate enough to stay busy into the first weekend of December.

While running here, there, and everywhere to call three different sports, I found time to snap a picture or two to remember it all by:

A soccer field nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains …

… our home for the weekend at Appalachian State.

Clearly, one of us is more comfortable in cold weather.

With my new friend and partner, Eddie Rodriguez.

Happened to be in Oklahoma right before the Bedlam football game.

Also got to see Historic Gallagher-Iba Arena.

My actual work was at Reynolds Center, always a house of horrors for Rice.

But it treated Bryndon Manzer and me just fine.

In December, I enjoyed the scene at Georgia Southern.

Not that Vonnie Holliday and I weren't hard at work.

Taking selfies …

… and enjoying a great atmosphere in a budding rivalry

Gorgeous setting for my last broadcast of 2015

I have this vague memory of seeing, on television, a college football team in simple, blue and white uniforms, playing on a grass field with fans standing on hills to watch, running the heck out of the triple option. I watched long enough to hear the announcers refer to the stadium as the Prettiest Little Stadium in America, and I thought, "I would love to see a game there some day."

The team was Georgia Southern, six-time champions of the NCAA's Division I-AA (now the Football Championship Subdivision, or FCS), and they now play at the FBS level, in an enlarged stadium, with an attack still predicated on the run, but operated out of the shotgun.

Some day is today.

I'll be calling Georgia Southern against Georgia State on ESPN3 Saturday afternoon at 2pm ET. It's not the biggest game of the day, but I'm excited to be working and excited to get this specific assignment.

The game has one of the most prolific passing offenses in Division I football (Georgia State ranks 8th in FBS) against the best rushing attack (Georgia Southern leads FBS). Not bad for a fall Saturday.

It's also the last game at Paulson Stadium before the natural grass surface is replaced by artificial turf. While I understand the economic realities of the decision to switch, I'm glad I get to see a game here while it's still got real grass.

Hopefully those classic Georgia Southern uniforms don't change any time soon!

Looking forward to a fun one!

If this doesn't make you smile …

Thankful for all the chances to live, work, travel, and take pictures with mascots!

Fifth time's the charm: baseball season is finally here!

I was excited to call a lot of college baseball and softball this year. I love college baseball, I thought I could easily embrace college softball, and I was looking forward to improving in a new area.

That has proved to be far more difficult than expected.

You see, the weather in New York (and much of the country, of course) has been awful. When I finally opened an NEC Front Row broadcast at LIU Brooklyn on Wednesday, it was the first time I got to call any baseball or softball this year on my FIFTH attempt.

Not cool at all. Here's how I went 0-for-4:

0-1: March 18 - LIU Brooklyn vs. St. John's baseball game cancelled due to field conditions.
0-2: March 21 - Two different flights out of La Guardia get cancelled during a snowstorm, and the SEC Network has to plan without me for my only scheduled college softball game. A big letdown. Missed a great game, too.
0-3: March 25 - I'm on hand to call LIU Brooklyn vs. NYIT baseball, but as the forecast grows steadily worse, it is correctly decided that we cannot do our broadcast because the rain could damage the equipment. The game goes ahead in nasty conditions, and I leave after two hours and five innings, barely able to feel my feet.
0-4: April 7 - As on March 25, the LIU Brooklyn vs. St. John's baseball game happens, but once again, rain prohibits us from broadcasting. This time I stay warm at home and follow online.

So I finally got on the air on Wednesday in LIU Brooklyn's 13-5 loss to Iona, and while it was cold and windy, we had no rain to speak of. I've got more baseball on tap throughout April and into May (starting this weekend with two games of what should be an excellent St. John's-Seton Hall series), and I'm looking forward to some warmer, springier days at the ballpark!

Calling a game at LIU is a pretty unique experience. The field is an enormous rectangle of artificial turf that has a baseball diamond in one corner, softball diamond in the next corner over, and loads of space for soccer and lacrosse up to the other two corners. With a temporary fence and all sorts of screens, overhangs, and ground rules, you never know exactly how a ball is going to play in the outfield.

I called Wednesday's game from a table adjacent to the LIU Brooklyn dugout, underneath the main rows of elevated bleachers and just to the right of home plate. It makes seeing the right-field corner just about impossible, but the trade-off is that you really feel like a part of the dugout chatter!

At any rate, great to be calling baseball again, and I'm looking forward to seeing how all these Northeastern teams, something of a mystery to me in my Rice days, fare throughout the season.

Pictures from my latest Georgia trip, ESPNU broadcast

I made my second trip of the year to call a game at the University of Georgia last weekend, including what felt like my umpteenth flight from LaGuardia to Atlanta. Many more still to come, of course!

With a free Saturday night and no college football in the area, I went to see Silverbacks Park in north Atlanta, home to the Atlanta Silverbacks of the North American Soccer League. Small stadium (c. 5,000 capacity) with a large youth-soccer presence in the crowd.

I was very surprised by two things: 1. The wind made it quite a cool evening. 2. T-shirts for 'MLS Atlanta 2017' were sold side-by-side (from a third-party vendor) with those of the home team, a member of a league often considered in competition with MLS. Very interesting.

My partner for Sunday's game, airing on ESPNU this time instead of the SEC Network, was former US women's national team star Shannon MacMillan, who won the MAC Hermann Trophy as the nation's top player in 1995 while at Portland, then was a key player as the US won the 1996 Olympics and 1999 World Cup and later played in the WUSA.

What had not occurred to me was that the 1996 Olympic soccer competition culminated in Athens, Georgia, with MacMillan scoring the semifinal game-winner and a goal in the final in games played before capacity crowds in Sanford Stadium, the Georgia football stadium! This was Shannon's first time back to Athens in 18 years, and even though she was performing in a much smaller venue, I think she had a great afternoon.

Most of us working on the broadcast were shadowed by University of Georgia broadcast television students as part of ESPN's Campus Connection program, and Shannon and I had the chance to talk to a bunch of them before things got too crazy, so that was a lot of fun.

Great opportunity for @UGAAthletics Students to learn from @jtyardley & Shannon MacMillan @ESPNU Campus Connection pic.twitter.com/ByqwRALPyM
— Meg Aronowitz (@megaronowitz) October 19, 2014

The game itself was a little hectic. A half-marathon held in the morning had limited our crew's access to the site, so there were a few things that wound up being done on-the-fly. In taping our opening segment, we were about to complete our best take when the stadium PA system launched into The Star-Spangled Banner, a definite no-no. So we did the open live, and except for one word stumble on my part (which I fairly successfully worked through), it still went great!

Afterward, with flights from Atlanta scheduled for Sunday night, we both high-tailed it out after the game, but not before I changed clothes and took a quick selfie with the stone Uga (pronounced like Uggla without the L) that keeps watch over the UGa Soccer Stadium!

Once I got to the airport, I could not convince TGIFriday's to switch any of its televisions away from Sunday Night Football, so to catch the first half of LA vs. Seattle for the MLS Supporters' Shield title, I used their wireless signal instead.

Finally, here's a link to our post-game segment, including both of the game's goals.

Which of these cars just screams "Jonathan Yardley" to you?

I've gotten over my general distaste for renting cars (being over 25 and having a real credit card make it a LOT easier), but it still throws me into some unusual situations.

On Saturday in Tallahassee, I was asked what size car I wanted, and since I knew my company had reserved a mid-size, I said, "mid-size or smaller, I don't care." When I went out to the lot, my spot featured this beauty:

Somehow, I don't think that car happens to be my style. I can't imagine pulling up just about anywhere in this. Especially on a work trip! I would be incredibly self-conscious standing anywhere near it.

So I had to go back in and tell the guys at the counter that I'd like a different car, adding, "Bet you've never had anybody turn down that car before." That got a big laugh -- I'm not sure whether it was with me or at me!

I wound up in this vehicle, much more to my liking:

Broadcasting in pictures, 2013

The most important things that happened to me in 2013 had nothing to do with broadcasting. A really special day in the summer kind of made the year, and there were a lot of great things sprinkled in throughout. Big changes, too.

Looking back on the broadcasting side, as I always say, I could have been busier, but it was still a good year and one that took me all over the place. I worked with more partners, producers, and crews than I can really keep track of, and I had a blast doing it.

Here's a look back at my broadcasting year in pictures:
 

Tucson, Arizona - February 2013

Grand Prairie, Texas - May 2013

Major League Soccer - Summer 2013

Major League Soccer - Fall 2013

NCAA basketball - Fall 2013