The Racine Raiders are partnering with Horlick, St. Catherine’s, and Lutheran high schools to bring the community Friday Night Lights @ Historic Horlick Athletic Field. The Raiders will produce live video broadcasts of nine games originating at Historic Horlick Athletic Field during the 2022 high school football season. The Raiders will carry five Horlick, two Lutheran, and two St. Catherine’s football games.
“This is a great opportunity to serve our mission of using athletics to positively influence the lives of kids and adults,” said Don Wadewitz, Raiders Vice President of Marketing. “Coaches, community members, families, and the student-athletes have all reached out to us to ask us about doing this and we’re proud to make it happen this year.”
The Raiders broadcast games during the Spring 2021 football season when COVID-19 restrictions meant limited or no fans could be at games. The team didn’t broadcast any games during the Fall 2021 season.
“In 2021, we saw an opportunity to serve the community and jumped at it,” said Wadewitz. “As we were coming out of COVID, we didn’t think there was a need but the community told us time and time again that they missed our high school broadcasts so we decided to bring them back in 2022.”
Wadewitz will handle play-by-play for most of the games. His color commentator with the Raiders, Evan Witalison, will join him on most of the broadcasts.
The games will be carried on the Raiders YouTube stream as well as on 1620 AM, commonly referred to as Raiders Radio, within a mile or two of Historic Horlick Athletic Field. This means fans could bring a radio and ear buds and listen to the live audio broadcast of the game while watching the game.
The Raiders are taking a unique financial approach to the effort as well. The team is voluntarily entering into a revenue sharing agreement with the high schools where the organizations will split any advertising revenue.
“This is another way that we can uniquely support our community,” said Wadewitz. “As an all-volunteer not-for-profit organization, our overhead is much lower than radio stations and other organizations that carry high school games.”
The Racine Raiders are currently seeking sponsors for the broadcasts. Interested businesses can contact Don Wadewitz through the Racine Raiders at (262) 833-7391 or dwadewitz@racineraiders.org.
The Racine Raiders are a 501c(3) not-for-profit organization with a mission of serving youth and adults through athletics. The Raiders have been active for the past 69 years and have won nine semi-professional football national or world championships.
SCHEDULE
- 8/19 – Horlick vs. Milwaukee Marshall
- 8/26 – Horlick vs. Badger
- 9/2 – St. Catherine’s vs. Luther Prep
- 9/9 – Horlick vs. Oak Creek
- 9/16 – St. Catherine’s vs. Brown Deer
- 9/23 – Racine Lutheran vs. St. Francis
- 9/30 – Horlick vs. Franklin
- 10/7 – Racine Lutheran vs. Living Word Lutheran
- 10/14 – Horlick vs. Park
All games scheduled to begin at 7:00 pm with a broadcast start time of 6:45 pm.
