It's like being in sports heaven for Ross Maghielse.
Maghielse is co-owner of Michigan Sports Radio.com and specializes
in streaming high school sporting events over the Internet.
More specifically, Maghielse is the director of broadcast activities
for eastern Michigan. Handling west Michigan is the other co-owner,
Brock Konkle. It's a statewide operation. Both are natives of
Rockford.
Maghielse is attending Oakland University in Rochester,
30 miles northwest of Detroit. “I worked for the Rockford Independent
newspaper when I was a senior and junior in high school as a
stringer covering high school sports,” Maghielse said. “I had
a column. Brock came up with the idea of starting Rams.radio.net
to broadcast Rockford High School games online. He contacted
me about helping him with this. I was in school and knew all
of the coaches and the ADs. So we started Rams radio. We did
one year of covering just Rockford sports (2005-06). “We got
a very good reception for the first year and a lot of interest.
We also had some other schools start calling us.
So the 2006-07 school year is when we started
Michigan Sports Radio.com. That's what we expanded to. We'd
cover six to eight games every Friday night during football
and basketball season. We were statewide, but still mostly in
Grand Rapids.” Maghielse then moved to southeastern Michigan
and started covering schools in that area. “We've had a big
presence on the east side of the state and also Grand Rapids,”
he said. “We have a whole team of broadcasters. Brock and I
are the two coordinators.
Brock picks the games for west Michigan and Lansing
and I pick the games for Oakland County.” Maghielse is also
a high school sports writer for the Oakland Press in Pontiac.
“I moved to Auburn Hills and we got a bigger presence so we
can do schools like Detroit Country Day, Lake Orion and a lot
of local county schools. We're closely affiliated with Mlive.com,”
Maghielse said. “The Oakland Press publishes our broadcast schedule
for Oakland County. We work with them as well.” They cover both
boys and girls basketball in the winter and some college hockey.
“We do make money off it. I'm still in college,” Maghielse said,
adding that it's not a full-time financial situation for either
co-owner. “It's my only job right now between that and (part-time
writer) with the Oakland Press.
Brock owns a screen printing business, which does
very well.” Maghielse has been pleased with the response his
website gets from the broadcasts. “We averaged just over 488
hits per game,” he said. “With hits, we'd like to think that
it's more than 488 listeners. If you have two people to a computer
or a bunch of high school buddies listening, it's more. We expect
we have more than 500 listeners a game on average. “Football
obviously draws more than a high school basketball game.” Maghielse
pointed to the uniqueness of his operation. “I think it's unique
and as far as I know, no one does anything quite what we do
in Michigan with high school sports,” he said. “Most sports
high school sports broadcasts whether it be local cable TV or
on radio, sometimes are aired later.
A lot of the broadcasts aren't done live. It might
come on a couple of hours after the game. Some of the TV broadcasts
don't come on until the following week. “Our games are always
live. They're also archived on our website within a day after
the game. So if you attended a big game and you wanted to go
back and listen to it, just go to our archive and scroll down
and find the game.
You can go to our site and see from six to eight
games. You can bounce between them.” To get to the sites, listeners
can type in www.michigansportsradio.com. “We go all the way
through the state championships (for football),” Maghielse said.
“We have a good working relationship with the MHSAA (Michigan
High School Athletic Association). They do let us do the playoffs
all the way to Ford Field (for the state finals). Broadcasts
are in the archives for two years. “You can still listen to
our broadcasts from our first year,” Maghielse said. “It's a
long list. You have to dig to find it.”
