About

ABOUT MIKE KLEIN

Mike was born 8 1/2 weeks prematurely on February 15th, 2002. From a young age, Mike loved listening to sporting events on the radio, and was fascinated by the commentary on those broadcasts. At age 5, Mike was diagnosed with ADHD. Mike says the biggest thing the diagnosis showed was his strengths, his weaknesses, his sensitivities, what he likes, and what he dislikes.

 After numerous rounds of speech therapy as a child, and several years of competing in speech during junior high and high school, Mike discovered he had a strong liking for public speaking. As a result of that discovery, Mike decided to broadcast his younger brother’s baseball games. Initially, Mike was only broadcasting on tape delay, and sending out the broadcast to family members the following day. That trend continued into his brother’s early years of Legion baseball. 

After a few games of the 2019 Legion Baseball season, Mike was approached by an assistant coach for Wahoo post 82 Legion Baseball. The coach gave Mike old broadcasting equipment of his, and asked if Mike would broadcast the games via YouTube. Mike agreed and provided the live play-by-play broadcasts for all of their remaining games over YouTube.  

As Mike broadcasted from the wide array of ballparks, Mike noticed the lack of media coverage for regular season and postseason legion baseball games. To fill the void, Mike created the Eastern Nebraska Legion Baseball Network later that fall. The goal of the network was to stream “The best of Legion baseball across Eastern Nebraska.” Mike was preparing for a very busy 2020 broadcast season when COVID-19 pandemic erupted. For a while, Mike was unsure if he would be able to broadcast due to COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings. 

Due to capacity restrictions established by the State of Nebraska, smaller media groups were allowed to broadcast sporting events beginning June 18th. As a result, Wahoo Post 82 Legion Baseball offered Mike the opportunity to broadcast all home games. Mike noted it took a while, but as the season progressed, viewership increased. By the end of the season,  Mike was prepared to “hang up the headset” as we was beginning his freshman year of college as a business major. 

After a few short weeks, Mike felt a calling to pursue broadcasting as a career.  Mike then reached out to Kevin Stuhr with Wahoo Sports Online for further guidance. Mike met with Kevin to discuss how he could get his name and brand out to a unique variety of viewers. Kevin told Mike that he overheard one of his very early tape delayed broadcasts, and believed that he would be a great addition to the Wahoo Sports Online crew. Throughout late 2020 and early 2021, Mike provided color commentary during broadcasts of Bishop Neumann basketball games for Wahoo Sports Online. 

Mike continued broadcasting for both Eastern Nebraska Legion Baseball Network and Wahoo Sports Online throughout the middle and later parts of 2021. In December 2021, Mike began providing play-by-play for select Bishop Neumann Basketball Games while broadcasting for Wahoo Sports Online, which continued for the remainder of the regular season. 

As the calendar shifted to 2022, Mike noticed that the number of individual schools participating in live streaming events was increasing. However, one key statistic that stood out to him was that schools in the lower classes were still struggling to find media coverage, especially during the postseason. Because of that, Mike changed the name of the Eastern Nebraska Legion Baseball Network to the Eastern Nebraska Sports Network. 

In July 2022, Mike teamed up with Kelly Johnson of Saunders County Online to broadcast the 2022 Nebraska American Legion Class B Juniors State Championship from Sam Crawford Field in Wahoo. To this day, both Mike and Kelly view the broadcast as a major success. 

Presently, Mike is working part time as a A/V technician at Omaha’s Baxter Arena. As part of his employment at the arena, Mike is also a member of the video production crew for UNO athletics, where he primarily works as a camera operator and will occasionally direct sporting events. 

When not at UNO, Mike works with 94.7 KYTF Radio in Blair, where he either directs or commentates broadcasts on their YouTube channels, BSDNlive and Saunders County Online.