Andrew Beyer: Letter To My Younger Self

Dear Middle School Andrew,

I want to tell you what you’ll eventually do with your life in the near future.

You’ll eventually graduate from a small private school in Burien with around 18 students in the class.

You’ll have no clue what O’Dea High School is like or what you want to do with yourself when you get there.

No friends, no people you know, nothing.

When you go to high school, you’ll take on an area where you always thought of people doing but never thought yourself doing it, sports broadcasting. You always would listen to Aaron Goldsmith on Root Sports or Rick Rizzs on Mariners Radio while you’d follow your favorite team, the Seattle Mariners.

During your freshman year, you’d have a fascination listening to Jason Fridge call football where the Irish would be the best team in the state and basketball games with future college basketball star Paolo Banchero playing.

“Wow, that’s a very cool job, I wish I could do that” you’d eventually say.

In March of your junior year, you’ll broadcast your first Irish sporting event, a baseball game, your favorite sport. Sure, the game might be preseason to everyone, but to you it’s extremely important. It’ll be your first game on the broadcast not knowing what to expect at all when you click the “Start” button.

You’ll be nervous and worried at first. That’s okay, you’ll learn to deal with the nerves as you gain more experience at what you’ll be doing game in game out of the baseball season.

Most importantly, you’ll be excited.

Very excited to take on the job that guys you listened to such as Rick Rizzs and Jason Fridge did. And your excitement will be very broad on the broadcast.

Your first game will be a nail-biter, coming down to the last batter. No biggie, just stay calm and composed and do the best you can. Your voice would be known throughout the Irish community after this game.

“Here’s the 2-2 from Adams…, He got him swinging strike 3!”

That call would get you more intrigued and motivated into doing what you’ll eventually have a strong passion for and pursue as you go into your senior year.

Just as your senior would begin, you’d meet Goldsmith at a Mariners game, the guy you’ve looked up to for years. You’ll ask him on how to get into the media field, and he’ll give you his story for reference and buy your meal and think to yourself, “what an awesome guy he is!”

As exciting as all of that is, not everything will fall right into your lap. You’ll have to go through adversity and have to grind to succeed.

Your dream school, the University of Washington will waitlist you and not let you in right away. It’s all good though, you got into Boise State University on scholarship. You’ll have just as big of an opportunity there as you will at the UW.

With all that being said, you’ll be successful at what you do, and you’ll eventually be grateful for all the people that helped get you there.

-Andrew