How a high school basketball skeptic became the iconic voice of Roncalli sports

He has nearly 900 games to sift through in his memory. And with Rob Brown’s steel trap of a mind, he remembers most of them. But some moments always come to the surface.

Cathedral met Roncalli in the sectional semifinal game in 2012, having won 13 straight. Cathedral had won an earlier meeting between the two teams by 22 points, and led on this night by five with 18.7 seconds left.

Bradley Fey, the program’s single-season assist leader, hit a 3-pointer to make it a two-point game. Cathedral hit one free throw and missed the second. Michael Clements grabbed the rebound and got the ball to Ryan Weber.

“Weber over to Fey. Fey, through the traffic, turns, spins, shoots…BANG!  He got it! Bradley Fey ties the game! Bradley Fey with a three at the top, and we’re going to overtime!”

Roncalli didn’t trail in overtime, winning 63-58.

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There was the 2021 softball semistate game between Roncalli and Mt. Vernon, which had been the ultimate pitchers duel for nine innings. Roncalli pitching sensation Keagan Rothrock had struck out 24, while Mt. Vernon’s Maddie Taylor kept pace by holding the Royals scoreless.

Catherine Lehner stood on third base with two outs and Chloe Parks at the plate.

“The captain, the senior, a chance to end this game right here. She is 0-4 tonight. She is definitely due. Line drive, and it gets away from the second baseman. Play at first, and she’s safe! She’s safe with the walkoff! She’s safe! She’s safe! The dugout empties, and the Royals have won the semistate! … My, oh my! Can you believe it?”

There was the Friday night at Victory Field in June 2016, in front of a record-setting crowd of 6,799. Roncalli was facing Zionsville, ranked among the top teams in the country, with a baseball state title on the line.

Will Harris stepped to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the ninth. The score was tied at 2. Roncalli had walked a tight-rope to make it this far, limiting damage in the sixth and escaping a jam in the eighth.

It was against that backdrop that Brown delivered one of his most memorable calls.

"Winning run for the Rebels ninety feet away. Mark Cobb stands at third. Will Harris a chance to win the state championship here. If not, we go to the 10th … 1-2. Chopped to short. He charges. They run into each other! The throw to first…he’s safe! The Rebels win! He’s safe! He’s safe! He’s safe! He’s safe! Ring the bell at the chapel! The Rebels have won the 2016 4A state championship!"

Was that call premeditated?

“It just jumped into my head,” he said. “In those types of scenarios, it sounds so much better if you just let whatever you're going to say come out naturally. You always wonder, in the replaying, if those types of calls are going to sound authentic. I guess I'm proud that stands up as authentic. The biggest fear is that in a big moment, in a game-deciding moment, you're going to miss something. A bang-bang play, you got to be ready to nail it. I'm glad that I hit it.”

Brown has become synonymous with Roncalli athletics since he took over as the basketball play-by-play announcer in 2007. In the 15 years since, he’s called triumphs and heartbreaks in every sport from football and basketball to lacrosse and track and field, while serving as one of the state’s few sports information directors.

After this spring, Brown will call it quits as the voice of the Royals, wanting to chase other adventures.

My, oh my, he’ll be tough to replace. Just ask his longtime football color commentator, Dan Bauer.

“His shoes are going to be impossible to fill.”

Brown never imagined he’d be doing this. He’d had his time in sports. That door had closed.

The Southport graduate got his master’s broadcasting at Syracuse, where he also worked in the sports information office, before taking a media relations and radio job with the Fort Wayne Fury of the Continental Basketball Association. He worked there from 1993-2000, before taking a media relations job with the Los Angeles Clippers.

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In 2003, he and his family moved back to the south side, where he joined his father’s financial services business in Greenwood. Four years later, a friend who was on Roncalli’s board came to him with an idea: The school had seen success broadcasting football games. Would he be interested in doing broadcasts of basketball games?

“I agreed to do 30 games, a combination of boys and girls games, that first season,” he said. “That was all I agreed to. And now here we are 15 years later, and I've done almost 900 games. You just never know how things are going to unfold.”

He was initially leery. He didn’t grow up Catholic. He didn’t know many people in the community. And, no offense, but the Woodshed (where Roncalli played its home basketball games until 2020) isn’t exactly the Staples Center.

“I didn't know if I would like it. I didn't know if I'd fit in,” he said. “I didn't follow high school basketball that closely. I was a pro basketball guy. I didn't know if I'd really like being that involved in the game.”

It seems laughable now, doesn’t it?

His first call was a girls basketball game against Scecina.

I think the score at the end of the first quarter was 20 to nothing or something like that,” he said. “I thought, ‘What am I watching here?’”

But the Roncalli community quickly embraced him, and he did the same for them. He was there night after night, at home and often on the road. In the early days, he’d use an analog phone to connect to the internet. If there wasn’t a line available, he’d use his mother-in-law’s flip phone — after he went to the drug store to load enough minutes to make it through the broadcast.

Now, most games on the Roncalli Media Network are streamed on YouTube. It’s a different world.

He started helping out with football broadcasts during the 2009 season, developing a friendship with Roncalli graduate Matt Taylor and doing work on the pregame and postgame shows. At the time, Taylor — now the radio voice of the Indianapolis Colts — was working for 1070 The Fan. Right before the start of the season, they launched their own Game of the Week.

Roncalli needed a play-by-play voice, and fast.

“This happened like eight days before the season started,” Brown recalled. “The school reached out to me and said, ‘We’re kind of in a pinch here. Is there any way you can take over as the play by play guy for football?’ I hadn't called football since college.”

In 12 seasons, Brown called a pair of Roncalli state titles (2016 and 2020) with Bauer, who won a state title with the 1983 team.

“Rob's attention to detail is ridiculous,” Bauer said. “He comes in with stats about every player on the roster. During the broadcast, he's got all this stuff at his fingertips. I do my own prep work, but it pales in comparison to what Rob does. When he goes into the broadcast, his work just shines. He makes all the rest of us look really good.”

After every season, without fail, Bauer knew what was coming in the mail.

“He would send me a handwritten card thanking me for the year,” he said. “I kept thinking, ‘I can't believe he's thanking me. He does so much more work than I do.’”

Roncalli athletic director David Lauck has called several games with Brown over the years. He sheepishly admits while Brown shows up with detailed notes and stats ahead of the broadcast, Lauck will often rely on a program he picked up on the way in.

“I would literally just show up and pull a roster or program and call it how I see it,” Lauck said. “Rob Brown, night in and night out, was meticulous with stats and background information on players. He ran the show.”

Brown has always loved statistics, going back to his days at Syracuse. In 2011, former Roncalli president Joe Hollowell asked if he would handle the school’s sports information duties. Within a couple of years, Brown had compiled a media guide for football, boys basketball and girls basketball that rivals any in the country.

He credits frequent conversations with Andrew Smith, the voice of the New Palestine Dragons, for showing him the ropes.

“If you were to pull up a copy of his game notes, and then lay them side by side and look at mine, there'd be a lot of similarities,” Brown said.

Through the years, Brown would ask listeners and viewers to chime in with where they were listening from. Without fail, fans and alumni from near and far — and sometimes overseas — would respond.

“You'd sit there doing a little high school broadcast, and then realize, ‘We have listeners and viewers all over the world,’” Bauer said.

Brown doesn’t do his job for the compliments, but they make a difference. Especially in moments of tragedy. Just 36 hours before the 2020 football state finals at Lucas Oil Stadium, Brown’s mom died.

“I could not have gotten through that without the support of the Roncalli community and the people that are in my corner,” he said. “I think about all the friends that I have, and the relationships that I really value and treasure. Eighty percent of those, 90% of those are people that I met through my experience the last 15 years around Roncalli. That's something that I never saw coming. As much as I've enjoyed calling games and the memories that come out of that, I'm 10 times more grateful for all the relationships that have come about.”

What’s next? For Brown, he’s not sure. He still has a day job, and at 52, he’s not leaving that any time soon. But he and his wife will do some traveling. He’ll have to get used to having free weekends.

And as for how Roncalli fills Brown’s shoes, that remains to be seen. Lauck did say there will be separate people hired to handle Brown’s sports information duties and his broadcasting duties.

“We've had a lot of alumni graduate in the last 10 or 15 years,” Lauck said. “John Herrick (WIBC) and Joey Mulinaro (Barstool Sports). Matt Taylor. (ESPN Radio’s) Jimmy Cook. Those four guys pretty much ran the airwaves for a while. Those guys would be great options. I don't think we're in a position to bring any of those guys on board. We'd be blessed if we could. But we'll open it up, and we'll see what we can do.”

Brown knows he can’t stay away from broadcasting forever — “I still have a fastball or two,” he says. But he says it likely won’t be for Roncalli, at least in any consistent capacity.

That doesn’t mean Lauck won’t give him a call if he’s in a pinch.

“I suspect that the adrenaline rush of calling some of the big games, he's gonna miss that, I hope,” Lauck said. “I'll definitely call Rob and see if he's interested in covering another game or two when when we need him.”

Follow IndyStar trending sports reporter Matthew VanTryon on Twitter @MVanTryon and email him story ideas at matthew.vantryon@indystar.com.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Inside Roncalli High School radio voice Rob Brown's journey