Is it just my imagination, or have the WHL’s Vancouver Giants had a new play by play guy almost every year in the recent past. According to Dr. Sport, Greg Douglas in his regular Saturday column in the Vancouver Sun, the new guy calling the plays for the Giants for the 2014-15 season will be Brendan Batchelor (below).
Brendan has risen from being the P.A. announcer for the BCHL Coquitlam Express to doing the play-by-play for the Surrey Eagles, and this coming season will be calling every Giants game on Team radio. (That looks like Team 1410 for most games, except when there’s a conflict with the BC Lions.)
Young Mr. Batchelor has also been named the Giants’ Director of Media Relations.
Dr. Sport also relays the word that local sports radio veteran Brook Ward, (pictured above) who does a Saturday and Sunday night sports talk show on CKNW, is still waiting to hear if he’ll be retained to do pre-and-post game features for the Giants, as well as the intermission interviews, which he’s handled for a number of years. There’s a strong likelihood the Team will want their own staffers to get those assignments, but you never know, especially in today’s media climate.
Brendan Batchelor was doing play by play last year for most of the road games with Blake Price on the home homes.
Brook Ward does a terrific job with the weekend late night sports slots on CKNW. He certainly has a pool of great contacts.
On the sports play-by-play front there is still young Brandon Astle who called games for the now-moved Abbotsford Heat last year and prior to that for the Langley Rivermen. In that latter gig he became well known, dare I say famous, for a last second of the game goal call that was even featured on CNN and many other media properties. He appeared regularly on various Shaw TV sports shows. Hopefully he will be able to land a placement in the local sports media scene.
Hopefully Brendan will shed that Ted Baxter sound to his on air casts.