JOURNAL SPORTS
RUSTON — Approaching a half century of broadcasting Louisiana Tech baseball, “Freeway” Dave Nitz has decided it’s time to tap the brakes.
No one has called college baseball play-by-play for one team longer than Nitz, a longtime Haughton resident who has retired from road trips but will call most home games at J.C. Love Field at Pat Patterson Park this season.
Louisiana Tech Athletics will honor Nitz in the upcoming season with several promotions and celebrations.
Labeled “Freeway Dave” by Lady Techsters basketball coaching legend Leon Barmore in the late 1970s because of his love of the road, Nitz called 47 seasons of Tech football and basketball until the 2021-22 season, when he decided “to slow down a little bit,” he said, to concentrate on baseball, his favorite sport. Nitz was also the voice of the Shreveport Captains minor league baseball team for many years.
His first Tech broadcast was in spring 1974 at old Arlington Stadium as Pat Patterson and the Bulldogs baseball team came one game short of going to the College World Series. Dr. Les Guice, recently retired as the University’s 14th president, was a Tech sophomore at the time.
During a broadcasting career of nearly 60 years, Nitz has called more than 4,500 Tech games, which includes eight of the most successful seasons of Lady Techsters basketball, beginning in the late 1970s. He spent 36 summers broadcasting professional baseball and was an assistant sports information director for Tech in the 1970s and 1980s.
A native of Milton, West Virginia, Nitz, 80, is a member of the Tech Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2010 and the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2019. He was named the 2009 Louisiana Sportscaster of the Year and been voted as the College Broadcaster of the Year in the state numerous times by the Louisiana Sports Writers Association.
A Nitz sidekick for 10 years on Tech football broadcasts and a member of Tech’s University Communications team, Shreveport-Bossier Journal columnist Teddy Allen will fill in for “The Nitzer” this season and broadcast road games with the help of Louisiana Tech Sports Properties, Learfield, the Louisiana Tech Sports Network, and the team at the flagship network of Red Peach Media. All games will be heard on the Louisiana Tech Sports app and most games will be carried on Sports Talk 97.7 KNBB.
Tech’s 56-game schedule begins Friday in Ruston when the Bulldogs take on Northern Colorado in a four-game series, part of a non-conference stretch in which the Bulldogs play 16 of their first 21 games at home with Nitz calling the action.
The Diamond Dogs have 31 home games scheduled and 20 matchups scheduled against nine programs that played in the NCAA Regionals last season.
Following the first road contest of the season at McNeese State on Feb. 28, the ‘Dogs will head to Sugar Land, Texas for the Battle at the Ballpark where they will take on Army, Creighton, and Air Force, March 1-3.