Koehn eager to get started

By Jay Jenkins

Published: June 26, 2008

Preparing to tackle a broadcast featuring Virginia’s relatively new lineup and national powerhouse Southern California would appear, at least on the surface, to be a daunting task for any
play-by-play artist.
Add in the fact that Dave Koehn has not handled a Division I football game since 2002 and the challenge appears almost overwhelming.
But Koehn, who was hired to handle Virginia’s football and men’s basketball radio broadcasting on Monday, has replaced the anxiety with excitement.
There’s a good reason.
“I think my tape would reflect this, but football is really my strength anyway,” Koehn said Tuesday. “It is what I am most familiar with, it’s what I have done the most from college on and it’s what I grew up watching. I think it was the first sport that I had an interest in.
“The bottom line is when you have grown up with a sport, you have a much better understanding of it than something you are just learning as you go. In the last two years I haven’t been doing it regularly, but even with that said, I was still doing a little bit of high school football, I had done five years of football in college and high school in Texas when I was down there, and prior to that I had done four years commercially in college and Colorado.”
Possessing a strong play-by-play background in football was a natural desire amongst many avid Virginia supporters and the lack of that type of experience led to the dismissal of numerous interested candidates during the later stages of the search process.
“I feel like I have almost a decade’s worth of experience in football,” Koehn said. “It really wasn’t too much of a concern for me. I think putting it on those terms sort of speaks for itself.”
Koehn, who starts in his new post July 7, will have less than a month to prepare for the start of the Cavaliers’ eighth training camp under coach Al Groh.
In the meantime, local bookstores beware.
“I would like to find the best literature that I can that epitomizes the history of the program and get my fingers around that so I can start with that as an infrastructure behind all my knowledge that I can pick up,” Koehn said. “Another part of it too is really trying to meet people that are involved in the program and pick their brains. I think there is a lot of information that can be gained, whether it is coaches or people in the know.
“I just want to utilize every avenue I can to gather as much information as I possibly can and make myself as well informed as a broadcaster can possibly be.”
Koehn, who has been at Vermont since 2005, worked at Sam Houston State in 2001 and 2002 before taking a position at Texas Lutheran. TLU is a Division III school that boasts an enrollment of just 1,400.
That move, at least in the quickly-climbing broadcaster’s portfolio, appears to have been a demotion of sorts.
“They lost their broadcast rights [to the Sam Houston State games] at the station that I was working for so it was a situation where I was able to keep my job at the station that I was at, but I was going to be doing high school sports and I wanted to be doing college sports,” Koehn explained. “I had an opportunity to do that at Texas Lutheran and that prompted the move more than anything.”
Koehn, who is replacing Mac McDonald, is unsure at this point if he will handle sports at UVa outside of basketball and football, but he has a strong background in baseball, including minor league work for a Class A affiliate of the Washington Nationals, the Vermont Lake Monsters.
For now, Koehn is merely living the dream.
“There were so many pieces that peak your interest,” the 32-year-old said. “Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind is the rich tradition at the University of Virginia. There is so much history here and it is an amazing conference.
“Another part of it that is intriguing from my standpoint is just the opportunity to kind of be a part of a program that not only has the emphasis on athletics, but it is neat to be a part of something where the emphasis is also on academics. It is not entirely different in terms of that from where I am at now. There is a concept of a public Ivy League, and I think Virginia and Vermont have that.”
Graduation day and academic awards for athletes are as important in Koehn’s eyes as any national accolade.
“It’s neat to see a true
student-athlete because sometimes that is lost,” he said. “I think Virginia presents the opportunity to work with people that are the definition of a student-athlete.”
Despite having worked at three previous schools in the past eight years, Koehn hopes his most recent position becomes a long-standing partnership.
“It is one of those situations that you get to do what you love in a tremendous professional opportunity and feel like you are going to be somewhere that you want to stay, which is not always the case,” Koehn said. “I think a lot of guys in my business bounce around, but this is the kind of place that you want to stay for 25, 35 years if you can and are lucky enough to do that.”