Mariners Sportscaster Offers Advice to Students

BETHANY, W.Va. – Find your passion and go for it, the television voice of Major League Baseball’s Seattle Mariners told Bethany College students.

Dave Sims ’75 delivered the Keresty Lecture, the signature event of the 59th annual Communications and Media Arts week. This year’s event was delivered via video conferencing.

Back-to-back Washington Sportscaster of the Year, Sims joined the Mariners 14 years seasons ago.

He also co-hosts “Basketball & Beyond with Coach K” for Sirius XM with Duke University coach Mike Krzyzewski, is a correspondent for MLB Network and calls Big East college basketball on FS1.

He began his career as a sportswriter for the New York Daily News before becoming a weekend sports anchor for WCBS-TV. He joined ESPN as a play-by-play announcer for college basketball in 1991. From 1998 to 2014, he did NFL play-by-play, including for Sunday Night and Monday Football, and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament for Westwood One.

“I’ve been blessed,” Sims said Thursday. “I think I’ve achieved all my goals.”

These days, he said, “my goal is to stay healthy and around long enough to see the Mariners make the playoffs.”

The team has the longest playoff drought in Major League Baseball, last securing a berth in 2001.

Sims’ biggest message to students was the importance of getting experience.

While at Bethany, he became involved in the radio station in his freshman year.

Sims told students that the big change in his life came when he secured an internship at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“I was thrown head first into a lot of things at the very beginning,” he said of the experience.

Sims set aside a traditional lecture format for the most part and instead opened the session up for questions from students and inquired about their individual career goals.

The students, mostly from the communications department, talked of starting careers in sports broadcasting, video and digital media, brand management, and magazine writing.

He noted that technology today, particularly smartphones, allows for greater opportunity for practicing video and recording. He suggested commentating games with the sound turned off, listen to as much material as possible, and get materials out there.

Sims encouraged students to be bold, aggressive, and different.

“You have to reach out,” he said. “You have to identify places you want to go, places that maybe share your view of things, and reach out.”

He added: “If you show up early and stay late, good old-fashioned hard work will get it done.”

ABOUT BETHANY COLLEGE

Bethany College, founded in 1840, is the oldest private college in West Virginia. The Bethany experience focuses on academic excellence in the area of liberal arts and prepares students for a lifetime of work and a life of significance.