Jul 2, 2010 By Herald Standard Staff 5 min read

I don’t assume to have much insight into the mind of a 16-year old. Still, I’m willing to hazard a guess that if less than two hours after a summer camp ends a kid changes his Facebook profile picture to a shot of himself from that camp, he must have had a pretty good time. (After all, if there’s anything “official” in a young person’s life, it’s Facebook profile pictures and relationship statuses.)

I had just finished the last of five days helping out with Lanny Frattare’s inaugural Sports Announcing Camp at Waynesburg University and was pretty sure the 37 high schoolers enjoyed themselves. But before most of the campers even made it home, I received a Facebook friend request from one of the campers featuring a brand new profile picture of him and Lanny arm-in-arm. So I’m guessing that my hunch was right.

I was the “Dorm Dad” (literally; it’s what my name tag said) for the Sunday through Thursday camp, which brought teens from as far away as Arizona and Delaware to sit at the feet of the longtime Pittsburgh Pirates announcer and learn about sports broadcasting. But the other goal of the camp organizers – Lanny and the university’s Department of Communication and Admissions Department – was for them to have a lot of fun, too.

And they did. By Thursday’s awards session – the campers competed all week for points, which they redeemed for raffle tickets toward gift cards and sports memorabilia – the group, who were nervous strangers just five days ago, were laughing and joking and yelling nicknames across the Goodwin Performing Arts Center on the Waynesburg campus.

There were baseball nuts, lacrosse players, stat geeks, high school PA announcers and even girls (albeit only four of them). Some were boisterous and gregarious, others quieter or more reserved. There were nerds, jocks and those that fall in between. They had nervously tried to mingle when they first met on Sunday and were like brothers and sisters (or so many of them said during Thursday’s goodbyes) by the end. It was astounding to see such a diverse group coalesce so quickly.

When the campers arrived, they were handed a team t-shirt – gold, blue, orange or red – and a snazzy, official Sports Announcing Camp polo. The color of their t-shirt coincided with their team for the week, captained by one of the four Waynesburg University students serving as “camp counselors” and dorm RAs.

All week long the teams (and counselors) battled it out in a series of games that Lanny put his own unique spin on: whiffle ball and cornhole tournaments, sports-themed Wheel of Fortune, a pool-based ping pong ball hunt and a hilarious round of Jeopardy.

(My favorite Jeopardy category: “Who cares?” including gems like “What is Lanny Frattare’s middle name?”)

But it wasn’t all fun and games. The campers spent nine sessions with Lanny, learning the ins and outs of sports broadcasting. They also spent Monday morning picking up tips and tales from Steelers broadcaster Bill Hillgrove and Penguins play-by-play man Paul Steigerwald.

The teens spent Tuesday at the Washington Wild Things ballpark, where they each got a chance to call the game for two innings. Thanks to more Waynesburg University students and the Department of Communication, the campers announced a four-camera “game broadcast” produced by the university. (I was the low first base camera in the dugout, wearing a batting helmet, if you were wondering.)

After getting to call real professional ball, each camper then spent Wednesday going through a series of hands-on exercises at the University: reading a script from a teleprompter, as a guest on a sports talk show on the campus radio station, voicing a radio commercial and sports news update and honing their post-game interviewing skills with a couple of stand-ins for pro athletes. And, best of all, in a few weeks each camper will get a DVD in the mail of all their work during the camp.

But the real star of the camp was the mastermind behind it, 62-year-old Lanny, who spent 33 years in the Pirates broadcast booth and has been nominated for the Ford Frick Award given by the Hall of Fame for excellence in broadcasting. It was easy to tell many had grown up listening to him and were understandably in awe to be able to play him in cornhole or follow him down a water slide at the pool.

(Getting to work with Lanny day in and day out and knowing he’s so down to earth and unaffected makes it easy to forget that the man is – to quote Will Farrell’s Ron Burgandy – “kind of a big deal.”)

I know from our camp planning sessions how much Lanny genuinely wanted to put on a really good time for these kids. Looking back on the past few days, I don’t need Facebook to know he succeeded.

In case you were wondering, the answer to the Jeopardy question is Lawrence. Brandon Szuminsky can be reached at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com.