Leonard Barry is not having to go far to broadcast baseball this summer. The STAA member and Boise, ID native is calling games for the Boise Hawks. The Hawks are an independent team in the Pioneer League, a Major League Baseball partner league.
Barry is the fifth consecutive STAA member to be the voice of baseball in Boise. He follows Steve Granado in 2016, Brendan King in 2017, Rylan Kobre in 2018 and Blaine McCormick in 2019.
Jack of all trades
Broadcasting isn’t be the only thing Barry is doing for the team. “I’m dipping my feet into a bit of everything — taking care of media relations, doing a bit of graphic design and video editing, doing SID style work creating game notes and stat packs and posting on social media. Lastly making sure we get on air every single night acting as my own broadcast engineer since we aren’t on terrestrial radio,” he says.
Staying in Boise means Barry is continuing his broadcasting of various sports for Boise State University and the NFHS Network.
Leaning on friends
Barry first learned of the Hawks opening in an STAA Job Leads email late in 2019. Two months later they said they wanted to hire him. Then the pandemic wiped out the 2020 season.
Local contacts helped Barry earn the job. “I had three different people call or send messages on my behalf,” he recalls. “All three of those conversations were mentioned to me when I came in for the interview.”
Teaming with STAA
Barry joined STAA in 2019, three years after being told of the organization by Portland Trail Blazers Broadcaster and former STAA member Travis Demers. “I had not heard about it until I job shadowed him back in 2016 while he was hosting an afternoon radio show in Portland,” Barry remembers.
“I think my play-by-play has greatly improved thanks to the monthly [STAA] member critiques. I always walk away learning something. The addition of the STAA Member Community [in November 2020] has also been a great help, because there are so many members sharing knowledge daily about prep, broadcasting and the job market,” he says.