In 2007, seniors Mike Cohen and Patrick Murray began broadcasting Miami sporting events over WMSR with a vision. The two friends and co-board members wanted to increase the professionalism of the sports division at the station and make Miami sporting events more accessible to the community. Now on the verge of graduation, Cohen and Murray reflect on the successes they've shared, the countless games they've covered and the tremendous amount of growth that WMSR Sports has experienced over the last three years.

Erika Hadley (EH): The last time we did a feature on WMSR sports broadcasting, you were just getting started with everything and it was your first season of really being serious about it and trying to cover all the games. Can you talk about those early beginnings and where it's gone since then?

Patrick Murray (PM): Things have definitely taken off since we were at that point. I think at that point we were happy just to be on the air regularly. Now it's been more about establishing WMSR consistently as a brand and consistently improving the broadcast quality that we have on WMSR and I think we've been successful.

Mike Cohen (MC): When we did the last article, I think we had done something like 28 broadcasts throughout the year, and for us that was huge. Then the next year and this year we've been doing 40 or 50 — every basketball game, every football game, every hockey home game and we've been traveling as well. We feel that we're at a point where you can't necessarily tell that we're student broadcasters anymore. That was the ultimate goal and I think we reached that.

EH: Can you talk about the listenership and how you've just made sports more available to the Miami community?

MC: One of our big goals was to give the Miami community a free way to listen to a professional broadcast so they'd be able to keep up with the teams. We were able to do that, and our best listenership (for the station) has been during games. We had at least 1,000 listeners when Miami and Michigan played in Ft. Wayne, which shows how successful we've been, how much work we put into it and the professionalism that we've brought to it.

PM: And the Miami community is more than just what's here in Oxford. It's the people who are recent graduates, who are living somewhere else in the United States. It's people who are studying abroad. It's worldwide.

EH: What is your favorite part of your job in a nutshell?

PM: It's a combination of two things. One is the routine. Hockey is my favorite, and going into the Goggin on game night is a great feeling. The other thing is calling the last seconds of games. We had our last show in the studio yesterday, and we closed it out just by playing the highlight from the end of the double overtime game against Michigan where we just went crazy. That feeling is like nothing else.

MC: I love getting to the press box at the Goggin when you can just smell the fresh ice, and you're there before anybody else is and you just see the stadium in all its glory. I love being able to watch everything unfold. I think the greatest part is at the end of the game when you're able to say, ‘Miami with another victory' -– there's nothing like it. Just that whole experience of being able to watch the team and how hard they work –- it gives you a sense of accomplishment when it's over.

EH: Can you talk about your relationship as broadcasters, WMSR co-board members and friends?

PM: We're friends first. That broadcast and board member part is a dimension of our friendship, but I think we're going to be friends long past the time that we're broadcasters or board members together or anything like that. It's an interesting dynamic, and I think that you can tell when we're on the air that we do have that connection.

MC: One of the things that I think has really helped our broadcast is the fact that we're friends, because that allows us to kind of suppress any ego that there would be. We rib each other, but that makes it comfortable. Every time we go into our broadcast, our goal is to put together the best broadcast we've ever done. We try to get better with every single game. We take Rico's message to heart as well and try to get better everyday. Our friendship helps us get our system down because we genuinely enjoy working with each other.

EH: Do either of you see any kind of a future in sports broadcasting after you leave Miami?

PM: I hope for one, I'm not sure I foresee one. No, I'm going to pursue it. I'm looking at different things right now and hoping that the right opportunity comes along.

MC: If this is it, it's sad and I'll miss it, but I've had a great run. That said, I would love to pursue it, I would love to keep doing it and to be perfectly honest, if Pat had a job and said, "Hey Mike, come join me," there's no way I'd be able to turn that down. With us being seniors, we talk about college-defining experiences. Broadcasting sports with Pat for WMSR has been a life-defining experience, as cheesy as that may sound. It's just been so much fun. We've done scores of games together, so to be able to do that professionally would just be a dream come true, but if that's not in the cards, we've had some amazing opportunities here.