Cutting Edge – Spanish Broadcasts Help Keep IU Soccer Unique
11/2/2018 10:00:00 AM | Men's Soccer
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BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Todd Yeagley gets it. Of course he does. He runs Indiana's powerhouse men's soccer program, and if keeping it thriving means doing what no one else will, he's all in.
"Anytime we can do something to get more people interested in Indiana soccer, it's great," Yeagley says.
Jeremy Gray pushes it. Of course he does. The Hoosiers senior associate athletic director helps make athletic director Fred Glass' outside-the-box thinking come true in a variety of ways.
Take, for instance, broadcasting IU men's soccer home games in Spanish. No other program in the country does it, likely because no other program thought of it.
"We always want to be on the cutting edge of things," Gray says. "We want to do things unique and different. This is part of that.
"It's another unique feature of our incredible soccer program."
Great programs start with great players, and you never know where those can come from -- a college town (think Bloomington's Jeremiah Gutjahr, John Bannec and Ben Yeagley), a rural community (Auburn, Indiana's Rece Buckmaster), a soccer hotbed (look at St. Louis' A.J. Palazzolo, Austin Panchot and Kyle Barks), nearby cities (Louisville's Trey Muse, Fort Wayne's Spencer Glass, Indianapolis area's Trey Kapsalis and Thomas Warr, and Columbus, Ohio's Bryant Pratt), and more.
You can draw players, and even fans, with on-field-excellence, and heaven knows the Hoosiers have done that with eight national championships, 19 College Cup appearances and last season's national runner-up finish.
You also can draw them with great educational and cultural opportunities, and Indiana has plenty of that, as well.
But sometimes you have to get creative to land the best players and promote the program, and this creativity features play-by-play calls from IU senior Juan Alvarado, a bilingual sports broadcasting major.
"We just got lucky that we had a student majoring in sports broadcasting who grew up in a Spanish-speaking home who happened to be an excellent sportscaster," Gray says.
Yeagley appreciates that luck.
"It's been good," he says. "It gives us a little bit of a footprint. It's the sport that a lot of Spanish-speaking folks are interested in, be it Latin America or Europe. I think it's great.
"The Mexico game (IU hosts the Mexican national team every spring) is one of those events that every year the fans find really exciting.
"Something like this gives us a bigger platform. It wasn't my idea, but I like it."
Does it help recruiting?
"Only positives can come from it," Yeagley says. "If there are prospects who hear what Indiana soccer is all about, and connect with us in that way, it will help us.
"Geographically, the footprint where we go to recruit, there is not a huge Latino market. Yes, in certain places like Chicago there is and some others.
"We recruit the best players for us, regardless of where they're from or their ethnicity or language. The broadcast is a connecting piece that shows Indiana soccer cares about their market."
Connection comes through a streaming service on IU's athletic website -- IU Hoosiers.com. Indiana streams 50 to 75 live events a year, including baseball games, volleyball matches and Chinese broadcasts of basketball games.
"People can access by listening on their smart phones, mobile devices or computers," Gray says. "You can hear it world-wide."
Gray says a Spanish broadcast generates "About 200 unique visitors" a game. That could be well more than 200 listeners.
"If you have someone listening on a computers, multiple people could be in that room."
How did IU's Spanish broadcasts come about?
IU had previously broadcast men's basketball games in Mandarin (a Chinese dialect). President Michael McRobbie asked Glass if there would be any interest in broadcasting another sport in Spanish. Hoosier officials settled on soccer.
"We discussed it and came to the consensus that the two sports that would make sense were baseball and soccer because of their popularity in Spanish-speaking countries," Gray says.
"We had a model to follow in that almost everybody in America, whether by accident or on purpose, had heard a Spanish soccer broadcast of some sort. We thought it might be easier to execute than a baseball broadcast."
It helped to have Alvarado around for last year's debut effort. He's from Ecuador via Florida (he spent his last two years of high school in the Sunshine State), who was more than ready to handle the assignment.
"As soon as I heard about the idea, I was like, 'Yeah, let's do it.'
"It's always been a dream to do something like this. A lot of people I admire, and the reason why I wanted to become a sports reporter, is because I heard people announcing games in Spanish back home. That's how it got started."
Alvarado tries to capture the energy made famous by such Spanish-speaking announcers as Christian Martinoli of Mexico, Alfonso Lasso of Ecuador and Mariano Closs of Argentina.
Alvarado came close during IU's 2-1 overtime win over Wisconsin last year. Mason Toye scored the winner in the second overtime, and Alvarado's call earned him Internet fame.
"We edited a clip of the goal to Juan's Spanish radio call and it went viral," Gray says. "He was excellent. He sounded just like what you'd hear (in pro soccer). He did it in that style. It's worked out well.
"People naturally gravitate to the excitement of a soccer match broadcast, even if they can only understand the final word -- goal. They like the rapid-fire nature in which a broadcaster is delivering the call. People are pumped. It's cool to see for a college soccer match."
It's just as cool, Alvarado says, to broadcast it.
"To be able to do this is a blessing and a great responsibility. We Latinos are super-high-energized people. We like to have fun, and our game is soccer. When you're a young Latino kid, you don't give him a toy car, you give him a soccer ball."
Alvarado had never broadcast a soccer match in Spanish before last year.
"I learned a lot," he says. "I spent the summer listening to a lot of people, looking for ways to improve, improve my voice, and make it entertaining.
"Spanish broadcasts are fast paced. You have to keep up with good Spanish play-by-play broadcasters, so I've had to adapt."
He's experimenting with favorite phrases that could set him apart from other soccer announcers.
"My favorite thing will always be the goal calls," he says. "It's super fun."
It's the latest fun for Alvarado, who became a Hoosier after researching U.S. journalism programs. IU's stood out.
"I was convinced right off the bat that this was the place to be," he says. "It's a good place for a Latino and a good place to live."
It's certainly a good place to broadcast soccer. Last season the Hoosiers were undefeated until losing to Stanford in the national championship game. This season they enter the postseason ranked No. 2 nationally after winning the Big Ten regular season championship outright.
"We're lucky we launched it in a year in which the team went undefeated with a great Spanish-speaking broadcaster," Gray says. "All of the stars aligned for it in Year 1 and we can't wait to carry it on into the future."
That's just what Alvarado hopes.
"My goal is to have this continue after I graduate. I'll consider this a success if this continues after my time."
Adds Gray: "Juan will be hard to replace. We might ask him to help find his replacement.
"It's not just good for Indiana soccer and it's a cool and unique thing to do, but Juan will take this experience into the workplace. With soccer becoming more popular and Spanish becoming more prevalent in the United States, he'll be able to go with a demo reel with good calls in English and Spanish. What a weapon to use compared to his fellow job applicants. It will be great for the media school, as well."
"Anytime we can do something to get more people interested in Indiana soccer, it's great," Yeagley says.
Jeremy Gray pushes it. Of course he does. The Hoosiers senior associate athletic director helps make athletic director Fred Glass' outside-the-box thinking come true in a variety of ways.
Take, for instance, broadcasting IU men's soccer home games in Spanish. No other program in the country does it, likely because no other program thought of it.
"We always want to be on the cutting edge of things," Gray says. "We want to do things unique and different. This is part of that.
"It's another unique feature of our incredible soccer program."
Great programs start with great players, and you never know where those can come from -- a college town (think Bloomington's Jeremiah Gutjahr, John Bannec and Ben Yeagley), a rural community (Auburn, Indiana's Rece Buckmaster), a soccer hotbed (look at St. Louis' A.J. Palazzolo, Austin Panchot and Kyle Barks), nearby cities (Louisville's Trey Muse, Fort Wayne's Spencer Glass, Indianapolis area's Trey Kapsalis and Thomas Warr, and Columbus, Ohio's Bryant Pratt), and more.
You can draw players, and even fans, with on-field-excellence, and heaven knows the Hoosiers have done that with eight national championships, 19 College Cup appearances and last season's national runner-up finish.
You also can draw them with great educational and cultural opportunities, and Indiana has plenty of that, as well.
But sometimes you have to get creative to land the best players and promote the program, and this creativity features play-by-play calls from IU senior Juan Alvarado, a bilingual sports broadcasting major.
"We just got lucky that we had a student majoring in sports broadcasting who grew up in a Spanish-speaking home who happened to be an excellent sportscaster," Gray says.
Yeagley appreciates that luck.
"It's been good," he says. "It gives us a little bit of a footprint. It's the sport that a lot of Spanish-speaking folks are interested in, be it Latin America or Europe. I think it's great.
"The Mexico game (IU hosts the Mexican national team every spring) is one of those events that every year the fans find really exciting.
"Something like this gives us a bigger platform. It wasn't my idea, but I like it."
Does it help recruiting?
"Only positives can come from it," Yeagley says. "If there are prospects who hear what Indiana soccer is all about, and connect with us in that way, it will help us.
"Geographically, the footprint where we go to recruit, there is not a huge Latino market. Yes, in certain places like Chicago there is and some others.
"We recruit the best players for us, regardless of where they're from or their ethnicity or language. The broadcast is a connecting piece that shows Indiana soccer cares about their market."
Connection comes through a streaming service on IU's athletic website -- IU Hoosiers.com. Indiana streams 50 to 75 live events a year, including baseball games, volleyball matches and Chinese broadcasts of basketball games.
"People can access by listening on their smart phones, mobile devices or computers," Gray says. "You can hear it world-wide."
Gray says a Spanish broadcast generates "About 200 unique visitors" a game. That could be well more than 200 listeners.
"If you have someone listening on a computers, multiple people could be in that room."
How did IU's Spanish broadcasts come about?
IU had previously broadcast men's basketball games in Mandarin (a Chinese dialect). President Michael McRobbie asked Glass if there would be any interest in broadcasting another sport in Spanish. Hoosier officials settled on soccer.
"We discussed it and came to the consensus that the two sports that would make sense were baseball and soccer because of their popularity in Spanish-speaking countries," Gray says.
"We had a model to follow in that almost everybody in America, whether by accident or on purpose, had heard a Spanish soccer broadcast of some sort. We thought it might be easier to execute than a baseball broadcast."
It helped to have Alvarado around for last year's debut effort. He's from Ecuador via Florida (he spent his last two years of high school in the Sunshine State), who was more than ready to handle the assignment.
"As soon as I heard about the idea, I was like, 'Yeah, let's do it.'
"It's always been a dream to do something like this. A lot of people I admire, and the reason why I wanted to become a sports reporter, is because I heard people announcing games in Spanish back home. That's how it got started."
Alvarado tries to capture the energy made famous by such Spanish-speaking announcers as Christian Martinoli of Mexico, Alfonso Lasso of Ecuador and Mariano Closs of Argentina.
Alvarado came close during IU's 2-1 overtime win over Wisconsin last year. Mason Toye scored the winner in the second overtime, and Alvarado's call earned him Internet fame.
"We edited a clip of the goal to Juan's Spanish radio call and it went viral," Gray says. "He was excellent. He sounded just like what you'd hear (in pro soccer). He did it in that style. It's worked out well.
"People naturally gravitate to the excitement of a soccer match broadcast, even if they can only understand the final word -- goal. They like the rapid-fire nature in which a broadcaster is delivering the call. People are pumped. It's cool to see for a college soccer match."
It's just as cool, Alvarado says, to broadcast it.
"To be able to do this is a blessing and a great responsibility. We Latinos are super-high-energized people. We like to have fun, and our game is soccer. When you're a young Latino kid, you don't give him a toy car, you give him a soccer ball."
Alvarado had never broadcast a soccer match in Spanish before last year.
"I learned a lot," he says. "I spent the summer listening to a lot of people, looking for ways to improve, improve my voice, and make it entertaining.
"Spanish broadcasts are fast paced. You have to keep up with good Spanish play-by-play broadcasters, so I've had to adapt."
He's experimenting with favorite phrases that could set him apart from other soccer announcers.
"My favorite thing will always be the goal calls," he says. "It's super fun."
It's the latest fun for Alvarado, who became a Hoosier after researching U.S. journalism programs. IU's stood out.
"I was convinced right off the bat that this was the place to be," he says. "It's a good place for a Latino and a good place to live."
It's certainly a good place to broadcast soccer. Last season the Hoosiers were undefeated until losing to Stanford in the national championship game. This season they enter the postseason ranked No. 2 nationally after winning the Big Ten regular season championship outright.
"We're lucky we launched it in a year in which the team went undefeated with a great Spanish-speaking broadcaster," Gray says. "All of the stars aligned for it in Year 1 and we can't wait to carry it on into the future."
That's just what Alvarado hopes.
"My goal is to have this continue after I graduate. I'll consider this a success if this continues after my time."
Adds Gray: "Juan will be hard to replace. We might ask him to help find his replacement.
"It's not just good for Indiana soccer and it's a cool and unique thing to do, but Juan will take this experience into the workplace. With soccer becoming more popular and Spanish becoming more prevalent in the United States, he'll be able to go with a demo reel with good calls in English and Spanish. What a weapon to use compared to his fellow job applicants. It will be great for the media school, as well."
Players Mentioned
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Goalkeeper
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