Beaver's Rob Longo fulfills dream as fill-in radio play-by-play announcer for Charlotte Hornets

Rob Longo woke up and felt it in his stomach. A little more than 24 hours from realizing his longtime dream, he was “a nervous wreck.”

Just a day earlier he’d learned he’d be filling in as the NBA Charlotte Hornets’ radio play-by-play announcer for the team’s road game against the Miami Heat on April 5. Longo, a studio host and producer for the Hornets Radio Network, was thrown into the role when the usual voice of the Hornets, Sam Farber, entered “health and safety protocols” following an away game against the Philadelphia 76ers on April 2.

Now, with the Hornets set to tip off versus the Heat the next evening, the Vanport Township native and Beaver Area High School grad was on a charter flight headed toward South Florida.

“I’m in a road arena; I haven’t done play-by-play in a while,” Longo, 29, recently recalled to the Beaver County Times. “So I’m like, ‘How is this going to sound?’ I’m very worried about the speed of the game. Because when you see these guys up close, you’re like, ‘Oh, my God. These guys are huge. And they’re fast, and they’re quick. How am I going to be able to keep up?’”

But, as the players on the court at Miami’s FTX Arena settled into the game, so did he. Two-plus years after moving to North Carolina for a part-time sports broadcasting gig and about a year after being hired by the Hornets, Longo had checked an item off his career bucket list. He’d announced his first NBA game. In fact, he’d done a good enough job that the Hornets communications department asked him to fill in for the team’s next three games, too, while Farber remained out.

It had been a long and winding road for Longo to get to that point, though.

Dave Longo, Rob’s father, still remembers he and his wife, Tracy, being concerned when their son wouldn’t speak for nearly two years after his birth. Instead, baby Rob would “point and grunt” to communicate. But, eventually, Rob uttered words. A lot of them. And Dave felt such a great deal of pride when Rob successfully dove into sports broadcasting as a freshman at Waynesburg University in 2011.

“I remember when I met him, how impressed I was by his maturity,” said Lanny Frattare, the longtime play-by-play announcer for the MLB’s Pittsburgh Pirates and an assistant professor in communications at Waynesburg. “And I’ve been teaching long enough to know that there’s a percentage of students that go into broadcasting that have a passion for it and some that don’t. And Rob certainly did.”

Longo took three classes taught by Frattare as a student at Waynesburg, and, quickly, began to look at Frattare as a mentor and friend.

After graduating in 2015, Longo juggled several jobs — including one as a sports reporter for the Beaver County Times, as a play-by-play announcer for high school football games for what is now the TribLive High School Sports Network and as a seasonal employee for MLB Data Operations. In 2017, discouraged by the state of the sports media industry, Longo began pursuing a master’s degree in education at Saint Francis University.

Sure enough, though, shortly after he earned his second degree in 2019, an opportunity arose: a part-time gig as a studio host and producer for Learfield (then Learfield IMG College), based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Even with nothing else secured aside from part-time employment, Longo moved seven hours south of his hometown in hopes that the job would lead to something bigger.

“I said, ‘Go for it,’” recalled Dave Longo. “We’ve always told our kids, ‘Chase what you want to do.’”

For more than a year, Rob Longo worked three other jobs, along with his job at Learfield, in order to support himself. He was a teaching assistant, working with students with disabilities at a local high school; he was a reading and math tutor for elementary school students; and he valeted cars at a nearby hotel.

Then, in January 2021, Longo was hired by the Hornets as a studio host and producer for the Hornets Radio Network.

“One of the major pluses that has given Rob the opportunity to be where he is now is the fact that he was willing to be patient,” Frattare said. “He was willing to do some (other) things and not lose sight of his dream, not lose sight of his goal.”

Longo’s path being far from linear gave him a great deal of appreciation for the chance he received earlier this month to fill in as the Hornets’ radio play-by-play announcer. With Farber not making his return until Charlotte’s Play-In Tournament loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday, Longo announced four games — in three different cities — from April 5 through April 10.

Though he was admittedly nervous before his first game, those who know him best weren’t surprised in the least by what ensued once he began.

“Once the ball went up in the air, it was like second nature to him,” said Dave Longo, who listened along as his son did what he’d always dreamt of doing during that early April contest between the Hornets and the Heat. “Both my wife and I were very, very proud.”

Still under the age of 30, Rob Longo is confident he’ll get plenty more shots like the one he got recently — even with Farber now back in his original role.

But he’s also sure he won’t soon forget the stretch he just had. Or the journey that he took to get there.

“Obviously, I have higher career aspirations,” Longo said. “But, if for whatever reason my career would plateau, I at least got to live the dream for a week.”

Contact Parth Upadhyaya at pupadhyaya@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @pupadhyaya_.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Beaver's Longo lives dream, fills in as play-by-play announcer for Hornets