Longtime listeners of 97.9 The Hill know Matt Krause as the voice of UNC women’s basketball.
The most recent season was Krause’s eighth behind the mic for the Tar Heels. But this past spring, a group of UNC students knew Krause for a different reason: he was their class instructor.
Krause taught MEJO 390, or Sports Commentary and Play-by-Play, in UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. The class allowed a handful of students to learn the ins and outs of sports commentary from a seasoned professional.
The 2025-26 season was Matt Krause’s eighth as the voice of UNC women’s basketball. (Image via Matt Krause)
There isn’t a sports fan among us who hasn’t imagined themselves calling a thrilling game on ESPN, and some of us even believe we could do better than whoever is on the call for the game we’re watching. But the nature of the work is so specialized and so technical, Krause told Chapelboro, that you can’t just jump in.
“The very average fan on the street believes that you just show up and look at a roster,” he said. “But in reality, when the game is occurring, you are in total control of the storylines. You have a who, a what, a where, when, why, how. And making it into a story requires being on top of all the background information about the teams themselves, but also the athletes individually. They’re all characters in a broader story.”
Because of that, Krause said his first assignment to his students wasn’t even recording a broadcast. The students were required to prepare “game charts,” or the notes written by an announcer before a broadcast begins. For the best of the best in the broadcasting world, these charts are incredibly detailed, with bios on a team’s biggest stars all the way to the last players on the bench.
March 5, 2011 – @DukeMBB vs. @UNC_Basketball in #HeyWoody last broadcast at Smith Center. His preparation is on display in these game charts. Also seen, some indicators of the neurocognitive challenges he would face in the coming years. #15YearsAgo pic.twitter.com/g8cMSfWdUL
— ??? ?????? (@WesDurham) March 5, 2026
That was the workload facing students like Anna Laible. Laible recently completed her junior year at UNC, but has already reported from two Olympic Games and studied abroad in Scotland. She says her dream is to become the first woman to call a World Series game on national television.
This past spring, though, Laible had to settle for UNC softball games at Anderson Stadium in Chapel Hill. She and other MEJO 390 students recorded game tapes and then submitted them to Krause for critiques. That, Laible said, was the most unenjoyable part of what was overall an enjoyable semester.
“I honestly cannot stand hearing my own voice,” Laible told Chapelboro. “So listening to myself is pretty brutal, I’m not going to lie. So I had to get used to listening to myself more with the critique sessions. It became a little easier, but not great, to be honest. Because I just don’t like listening to myself.”
Anna Laible calls a UNC softball game at Anderson Stadium. (Image via UNC-Chapel Hill/Jon Gardiner)
Even someone like Laible, who has a wealth of experience calling baseball games for the High Point-Thomasville HiToms of the Coastal Plain League and meeting other industry pros, had things to learn. Krause noted there were some technical qualities he’s innately known for years which turned out to be more difficult than he thought to teach. For example: grammar and syntax.
“Everybody in the baseball/softball play-by-play world – and I say everybody, because it’s pretty much all the way up to the major leagues – struggles with putting the object in front of the action,” Krause said. “What I mean by that is a properly called play would be: ‘The 0-1 pitch. Swing and a fly ball hit to left field. Howe tracking it back, onto the warning track, reaches up and squeezes it with the brown glove, crossing into foul territory.’
“Frequently, all the way up even to the big leagues, you’re going to get: ‘Fly ball hit to right field. This one’s going to be caught by Smith.’”
But however much his students struggled at the beginning of the semester, Krause said, the improvement by the end was easy to hear. He was particularly struck by Laible’s case.
“She had ambition for this, but the on-air product at the start was a work in progress,” said Krause. “But by her final portfolio tape, I sat back and listened and said, ‘This is professional quality stuff.’”
“I feel multiple times better than I did before, especially not having to just do it all on my own,” Laible said. “Having somebody listen and give me feedback and all that during the time, so that I could have that feedback before my next game. It was just invaluable.”
This summer, Laible is taking that feedback to Los Angeles, where she’ll be a production intern for FOX Sports as it broadcasts the FIFA World Cup. When she returns to Chapel Hill, she plans to call more Tar Heel sports in the fall, including soccer and field hockey.
Krause said the course will continue as a fall-only class, to better gel with his schedule calling women’s basketball games. It’s too ambitious to expect his students to call Carolina football games in Kenan this year, he said, but it’s not out of the question one of his MEJO 390 alums could find themselves in that booth in the future.
We all have to start somewhere.
Featured image via Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill
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