How 90.9 FM broadcast team brings Liberty baseball to the airwaves

During the process of investigating possible universities to attend, Nick Pierce came across the website for 90.9 The Light (WQLU-FM), Liberty University’s student-run radio station on campus. The website boasted of the numerous opportunities students had to be involved with sports broadcasts,  and Pierce was hooked.

“That is a big reason that I came to Liberty in the first place,” Pierce said. “I saw The Light’s webpage online at that point … and how clear it was that students were involved and were getting real opportunities to better themselves.”

Sixteen years and hundreds of Liberty athletics broadcasts later, Pierce, now on staff as a sportscaster for the Liberty Flames Sports Network, is helping to bring baseball back to the airwaves of 90.9 FM in the Lynchburg area. In doing so, he is providing students with the same hands-on opportunities that got him to where he is today.

Since going on air in 1993, the FM radio station has served as a training ground for communications students, who are given the chance to work on live broadcasts as part of their education.

Coverage on 90.9 FM of live sporting events made up a small portion of the station’s airtime early on, but the sports coverage’s popularity and quality quickly grew alongside the expansion of the university’s athletic programs. 

From the time Pierce arrived as a student at Liberty in 2004, he began working in a student position at the station. Jerod Brooks, the sports director at The Light at the time, trained Pierce and gave him ample opportunities to get involved with the coverage of local high school football and Liberty sports broadcasts.

“It gave me a huge opportunity to get in there and get some practical experience,” Pierce said. “Not just classrooms and tests, but to get behind a mixer and to say, ‘Okay, you are going to run this ballgame tonight.’”

In 2005, Pierce joined forces with Pat Doney, a fellow student announcer who now works as a sports anchor for WNBC Dallas/Fort Worth, to establish the live coverage of Liberty baseball on the radio. 

Baseball is Pierce’s passion, and he continued his coverage until his graduation in 2007 and beyond, calling games as a freelance broadcaster for several years after he graduated.

“(Doing Liberty baseball broadcasts) gave me an opportunity to get my foot in the door,” Pierce said. “(Broadcasting) allowed me to be around the sport I grew up loving.” 

Pierce was hired as Liberty Athletics Audio Coordinator in 2009 and oversaw the continued coverage of baseball games on 90.9 FM until 2013. He then helped facilitate the transition to the local ESPN radio affiliate, which began broadcasting LU baseball in 2014. At that time, the broadcasts moved beyond the level of student production and the university desired to continue broadcasting all of the team’s home and away games, which sometimes conflicted with other programming at The Light.

After six years of Liberty baseball broadcasts on CBS Sports Radio 93.3 FM in Lynchburg, Pierce and the staff at LFSN (Liberty Flames Sports Network) began inquiring about the best mode for broadcasting live sports. With an ever-increasing amount of people listening digitally, the network decided to follow the trend and move all of Liberty’s baseball broadcasts to an online streaming service. 

In an effort to further the reach of the broadcasts and provide student opportunities, Pierce reached out the management of 90.9 The Light to reconnect with the student radio station and provide weekly broadcasts of selected Liberty baseball games.

“Doing some research this year, we realized that a lot of our listeners are online,” Pierce said. “So we made the switch to going online with a lot of our broadcasts. We figured, if we are going to do that, we could put one game a week on The Light. That would be a good, cost-efficient way to stay on the radio.”

Jamie Hall, another Liberty graduate and the current station manager at The Light, also enjoyed the chance to work on sports broadcasts on 90.9 during his time as a student. Putting Liberty baseball back on the air at The Light helps him to champion future opportunities for students today and produce more solid local programming for the station.

“It made sense and is a good experience for our (staff at 90.9) as far as board operators, and it does add some more local programming,” Hall said. “From an athletics standpoint, it gives them an outlet that reaches toward the public as opposed to a video stream where someone has to want to find it.”

Bringing coverage of Liberty baseball on the radio helps to reach a larger audience of possible listeners, as opposed to an online
stream alone. 

Hall explained that many times people might hear a game broadcast on a Sunday afternoon and decide to head over to campus to catch the rest of the game from that point. In that way, The Light’s radio coverage is a great promotional tool for Liberty athletics as well.

“The positive thing about having a stream is it is available, it is on demand,” Hall said. “But the cool
thing about having it over the air is sometimes you find an audience that did not even know that there was a baseball game.”

Hall has broadcasted Liberty athletics on 90.9 FM nearly since its inception, working as the play-by-play announcer for the Lady Flames women’s basketball team since the late 90s. He, along with Pierce, is part of the group of experienced individuals who work for LFSN’s radio and television coverage of Liberty sports and are committed to helping current Liberty students succeed in broadcasting.

The decision to move Liberty baseball back to The Light opens many new opportunities for current students to get involved working alongside skilled announcers, using professional equipment, an experience that will influence their career opportunities after college.

“One of the big advantages of (Liberty athletics) being on The Light in so many of our sports is giving opportunities for students to make a little bit of extra money and be able to gain some valuable experience and get on the air,” Pierce said.

Weaner is a sports reporter. Follow him on Twitter.