John R. Leahy

John R. Leahy (born November 28, 1964, in Somerville, Massachusetts) is an American professional sports broadcaster who is the play-by-play voice of the Kalamazoo Kings professional baseball club based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the Frontier League of professional baseball. John was the play-by-play voice of the North Shore Spirit baseball club in the Canadian-American Association of Professional Baseball league from 2005 to 2007. John is also currently the play-by-play voice for Merrimack College ice hockey and previously, men's and women's basketball, based in North Andover, MA. On November 27, 2007, he filled in behind the mike for the D1 men's basketball contest between Maine and Providence at the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence, Rhode Island, on WVOM radio in Maine as a fill-in for Ron Lisnet, the Maine play-by-play broadcaster.

A 1989 graduate of the University of Massachusetts Boston, John obtained a B.A. in psychology and worked in the mental health field from 1990-2005 in Massachusetts and California. It was also during this time that he began his broadcasting career in 1995. His original experiences were rooted in high school play-by-play, doing high school games in his hometown of Stoughton, Massachusetts. John graduated from the Connecticut School of Broadcasting in 1995 [http://www.800tvradio.com] and began his work covering high school hockey on local access television , which later branched out into football and basketball. In all, John broadcasted close to a thousand games at the high school level.

His work extended into amateur baseball, covering Yawkey League baseball [http://www.yawkeybaseball.com] in 2003 and 2004 for the Comcast television network in the greater Boston area, working alongside hall of fame sports producer Arlen Showstack. While working for Comcast, he had the opportunity to cover the North Shore Spirit in the 2003 and 2004 playoff seasons, which led to his hiring as the Spirit radio announcer in 2005, replacing Don Boyle, who did the games for the first two years of the team's existence. In John's first season with the team, the games were carried on WESX (1230 AM) in Marblehead, Mass. WESX was subsequently sold by station owner Jay Asher, which led to the broadcasts being picked up by 1510 the Zone WWZN in Boston, a 50,000 watt station, which had employed Eddie Andelman and Sean McDonough as regular guest hosts at one time. The Zone carried the final two seasons of Spirit baseball on their airwaves. John covered every Spirit game in his three seasons with the club, not missing a single pitch. He covered the final game in Spirit history, a 6-4 loss to the Nashua Pride in game 3 of the 2007 Can-Am League championship series, calling the final out, Nelson Teilon flying out to deep center field with the tying runs on to end the game, the series, and the five year existence of the Spirit.

In the 2008 season, his first with the Kings, John reached the playoffs for the third consecutive season as a broadcaster, as well as his second consecutive season reaching the championship series, after a 60-36 regular season. The Kings defeated the Gateway Grizzlies (Sauget, Ill). three games to one in the Frontier League division series, and then advanced to the championship series against the Windy City Thunderbolts (Crestwood, Ill), where the Kings were swept in three games. Kings games were heard on ESPN 1660 in Kalamazoo.

A tireless supporter of high school athletics, John has developed two websites which he maintains year round to chronicle high school sports. The first website is devoted to the Hockomock League football league in Southeastern Massachusetts [http://www.geocities.com/jleahy142002] , and the second is devoted to the team he covered for 10 years, Stoughton (MA) high school hockey. [http://www.geocities.com/stoughtonhockey/] .

He also appeared on ESPNU as a sideline reporter for Merrimack College in March 2006 in an ice hockey game between Merrimack and Maine. John is a member of the Sportscasters Talent Agency of America [http://www.staatalent.com/] .

On the Internet:

http://www.johnrleahy.com