May 2, 2006
SPORTSMCC student plans to broadcast athletics
Alex Hoxeng has big plans for the athletic and communications departments at MCC.
Hoxeng is a typical college student, juggling classes. Despite being blind, he’s become a dynamic student in academics and activities. At 20 years old, the communications major has developed a plan to combine two of his passions, athletics and communications.
Hoxeng plans on delivering a radio broadcast program to MCC.
“I want to get a boost in attendance at home games,” Hoxeng said. “I want to bring sportsjuice.com to MCC and I want to broadcast from the football stadium, in the court, etc. I’m prepared with the right equipment.”
Hoxeng found out about sportsjuice.com, an internet sports broadcast website, last summer while sitting in on a Mesa Miners broadcast. “I got the idea from there that this would be a good way to connect sports fans,” he said.
When Hoxeng found out that MCC didn’t have a program dedicated solely to broadcasting, he started planning on organizing on bringing sportsjuice.com to the MCC campus. “Broadcasting from home and away games and having people listen to them over the internet might encourage them to want to attend the next game, especially in basketball,” Hoxeng explained.
Hoxeng is in the process of organizing the foundations of his broadcasting venture. “I’ll start the funding first myself, and MCC and anyone else is welcome to chip in,” Hoxeng said.
As far as staffing, Hoxeng is currently reviewing applications in search of hiring a play-by-play announcer, as Hoxeng himself will supervise and set up a broadcast site on the MCC homepage. In his search for announcers, Hoxeng said he has received applications from California, Missouri and New York. “I think it would probably take two people to fill the positions,” Hoxeng said.
Hoxeng’s goal is to finish delegating jobs by the summer and have a full broadcast team set up by the fall, just in time for the new football season.
Hoxeng’s plan to bring a site with live and archived broadcasts would be the first athletic broadcasting site in Arizona.
According to Hoxeng, the only other community college that actively runs a similar site is Cerritos Community College in California. “This is my first real shot at this, and I think I could do a really good job at it,” Hoxeng said.
Eventually, Hoxeng would like to turn this into a fulltime career, but first would like to bring a program fully dedicated to broadcasting MCC.
“I want to become a marketing director in sales or a program director at a station. Also, I would like to fully develop a department just for broadcasting and I wouldn’t mind teaching in the future,” Hoxeng said.
Hoxeng is still drawing up a proposal to present to MCC, and though it hasn’t made it’s way yet, Hoxeng remains hopeful. “It’s still in the process of rough drafts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it it’s approved,” he said.
Hoxeng welcomes anyone who may be interested in joining his broadcast efforts by reaching him at ahoxeng@aol.com
Volume 43, Issue 14. Today is
photo by Robert Neal