Two BGSU alumni thrive as NHL play-by-play broadcasters

Steve Mears ’02 lives a dream each workday.

During the 2025-26 season, his second full year as the television play-by-play voice of the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets, the Bowling Green State University alumnus looked over Nationwide Arena on a Saturday evening as the pregame crescendo came to its boiling point.

“The best part of the job is right here, right now,” Mears said.

AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” blared through the sound system. A video montage commemorating the Jackets’ 25th year played on the scoreboard. A sellout crowd rose to its feet as the Blue Jackets rocketed from the tunnel onto the ice one by one. As the playoffs neared, two key points were up for grabs.

Two booths away, Mears had company – a fellow BGSU Falcon who reached the top of the sports broadcasting field.

Everett Fitzhugh ’11, who will enter his sixth season as the Kraken’s radio play-by-play announcer in 2026-27, became an instrumental part of the expansion franchise's introduction to a new market of hockey fans. Fitzhugh is uniquely qualified for the task because he was once in their shoes.

A Detroit native, Fitzhugh knew he wanted to work somewhere in the sports industry, so he narrowed his choices only to universities that sponsored all four major sports — football, baseball, basketball and hockey — at the Division I level. BGSU, the only school in Ohio with a hockey national championship, also boasts a nationally recognized sport management program.

But until he arrived at BGSU, Fitzhugh had a major gap in his sports fan resume.

“My roommate dragged me off the couch to go to a Bowling Green-UConn hockey game, and I had never been to a live hockey game,” he said. “Going to that game, I fell in love with hockey. You go to the game, and it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re a hockey school!’”

Bowling Green’s longstanding relationship with hockey is exactly what drew Mears, a native of western Pennsylvania, to the University. Watching the Pittsburgh Penguins growing up, Mears kept noticing the volume of NHL players — Rob Blake, Garry Galley, Ken Morrow, Brian MacLellan, Dan Bylsma and Nelson Emerson among them — who went to BGSU.

Mears knew he wanted to enter broadcasting, and one visit to Bowling Green was all it took to see a career vision. Even better for Mears, a key opportunity manifested during his first year.

As an 18-year-old freshman, Mears had the chance to call the Falcons’ Division I hockey games, the start of four years of invaluable experience that helped him sharpen his abilities in college.

To this day, Mears fondly remembers his first call, a game against Michigan State that proved to be the initial step on his journey to the NHL.

“I thought it might as well have been CBS National News. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world,” Mears said. “I remember being so nervous the first few times I went on the air, but it just speaks to the opportunity I was given at Bowling Green. I was laying the foundation for what would be a professional career.”

Mears and Fitzhugh followed in the footsteps of the legendary Mike “Doc” Emrick ’76, a BGSU alum who became the voice of hockey in the United States and earned the distinction of being the first-ever announcer to be inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. 

All three called hockey games as BGSU students, which not only provided a wealth of opportunity to build a demo reel, but also offered comprehensive views of sports broadcasting and the intricate business of hockey.

After his first radio broadcast of a BGSU hockey game, Fitzhugh remembers calling his mother and making it his stated mission to make the NHL one day. Before he was named the NHL’s first Black team play-by-play announcer in 2021, though, Fitzhugh was ready for his first chances after college.

Experience at BGSU led directly to opportunities with the United States Hockey League, the Youngstown Phantoms of the USHL and the Cincinnati Cyclones of the ECHL. Just like a player, Fitzhugh used his time in minor league hockey as a proving ground.

“I was so prepared for a life in minor league hockey and in pro hockey,” Fitzhugh said. “It is so much more than calling games – there’s the technical aspect, the PR side, the digital side, the social media side – that I got experience with while working for the BGSU hockey program. 

“If you had told me as a 17-year-old freshman in 2006 that, 20 years later at age 37, I would be in my fifth season in the NHL, I would’ve probably called you crazy.”

Mears started in the Central Hockey League before landing roles with the New York Islanders, NHL Network and the Pittsburgh Penguins, which led to him becoming the full-time voice of the Blue Jackets.

Mears jokes that he technically got his start doing play-by-play while his brothers played the NHL video games –  “They hated that,” he said – but also credits the experience of broadcasting games at Bowling Green for setting a course into pro hockey.

“That was hugely important, just to get the reps and just to get used to the flow of doing a hockey game,” he said. “The opportunity to learn how to be a professional broadcaster came from so many different people, and not just the hockey people, but great professors who taught me about the industry and where the industry was going.”

For both Mears and Fitzhugh, their connection to their alma mater runs deep.

Fitzhugh, who wore an orange tie for his return to Ohio, said he is proud that everyone else in the Kraken media sphere is sick of hearing him talk about how much he loves Bowling Green. (His visit to Columbus included another countless dig at Kraken TV color analyst J.T. Brown, whose Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs were on the losing end of BGSU’s win in the 1984 NCAA title game. In the next booth, Brown shook his head as Fitzhugh flapped his arms like wings and screeched like a Falcon.)

The two play-by-play voices have the chance to do something they always dreamed of, an opportunity that Fitzhugh said never grows old. 

“Being able to do this for a living is so much fun and so enjoyable,” Fitzhugh said. “Every trip, every year, there’s always something cool, someone you meet, something you see where you remind yourself, ‘Man, this is the coolest job in the world.’”

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