GARRETT WAIT
Sports Editor
Pepperdine senior Bill Schindler has a lot of responsibility. He’s the main play-by-play announcer for KWVS and TV 26. He’s up to his elbows in work but managed to find time to be this week’s guest on “10 Minutes With …”
How many sports do you announce for now?
Let’s see, there’s baseball, women’s basketball, I’ll do a couple (of) men’s basketball games, so I guess that counts, women’s volleyball and men’s volleyball, so five.
Is there a learning curve for some of the sports you haven’t really followed before you got here?
Oh yeah. Volleyball. I had never seen a match before I got here, so that was a huge learning curve and I’m still learning. Really, the coaching staffs for all the sports I’ve covered have been amazing to me, but especially the volleyball coaches. They’ve let me come and watch film. Same with basketball. I knew basketball a little, but I didn’t know it that well. I basically went through and read the Idiot’s Guide to Basketball and then watched a lot of game film.
How would you characterize your style? Are you a mix of some of the guys you grew up listening to or what?
Style-wise, I think right now that at this point in my career, that’s something I’m still trying to come up with, but I’d say I think it’s more of the guy that’s just sitting next to you and talking to you. That’s what I see myself trying to be. Someone that can give you the story and the facts of the game but also maybe make you laugh from time to time and, you know, just kind of point things out. Like, ‘Geez, that was a heck of a play.’
Have you had any new opportunities to work on television or radio broadcasts outside of Pepperdine?
Not lately, and you know what? Honestly, I’m kind of happy because I barely have time for what I’m doing now. If somebody came to me and said, ‘Hey, I want you to do something as a college student right now,’ I’d be flattered, but I’d also be kind of thinking, ‘When am I going to do this?’
How do you manage to fit all the sports and stuff into your schedule as a full-time student?
I don’t sleep any more. Really, very little sleep because I have 17 units right now and then once women’s basketball starts and I’m on the road with them, it just is one of those things where you really have to be disciplined with your time. I mean, I try to make time to have a little bit of free time, but there’s not much, just to keep from going insane. You’ve got to find time when you do your homework, find time when you get ready for the sport, find time when you’re actually covering the sport, and you really have to be disciplined. At least a lot of my teachers have been pretty good with understanding that.
With regard to basketball, both women’s and men’s, have you done any advance scouting for the season?
My take on the upcoming season, I think for women’s basketball is that they’re going to be better than last year. They’re a really young team and so it’s going to be interesting to see how they adjust. But I think right now, you’ve got a coach who’s in her second year and now she’s got a team that really is buying into her philosophies and now her first recruiting class in. So you’re going to see a team, that’s going to start to take on its own style and I think we’re going to see a lot of jumps that way in women’s basketball. In men’s basketball, we’ll see. They lost a lot of people. I think, women’s basketball you’ve gained a lot of people and men’s basketball, you’ve lost a lot of people. So I think they’re going to start to kind of even out.
What’s the plan after graduation?
That’s a good question. The plan right now is to get my reel tape together and start sending it to as many people as I can. Then, I promise you I’ll give you the first story when I get hired. Right now, I mean, I’m going to send it a lot of places. There’s going to be a lot of people that get my reel tape and resume. I think that’s how you have to do it because there’s never a guaranteed job, and I look at it as if you shoot high, the worst people can say is ‘No.’ So you might as well send it to the top dogs, but you also want to cover your backside by sending it to some lower markets, too, because that’s where you’re going to have to start.
11-03-2005