When Gavan Baxley was six months old, he attended his first TROY football game. On Oct. 25, during the Trojans’ win against the Ragin’ Cajuns, Baxley was on the sidelines reporting for EPSN+.
The senior broadcast journalism major from Wetumpka shared that sports have always been his thing.
“I’ve been rambling about statistics and different games that I’m going to or have been to since I was six,” he said. “My first ever game, I was six months old here at TROY. And then when I was six years old, we started going to Alabama football games with my dad. Since then, I’ve just continued to grow to love football as a sport and then other sports as well.”
His love for TROY grew as he attended football games to watch his cousin play for the Trojans in the early 2000s. Baxley himself played football growing up, but by middle school, he decided not to continue to pursue playing the sport and turned his attention to running.
“In my recruitment process for cross country and track, once I figured out that TROY was an option, I mean, it was almost a no-brainer when you look at the ability to be able to continue running. TROY was one of the few Division one schools that I had an opportunity to do that.”
During his senior year at Wetumpka High School, Baxley became the play-by-play announcer for the Indians through a talk show that he and his friends set up. Four years later, he still commutes home to work with what is now known as the Wetumpka Sports Network.
In the spring of 2024, during his freshman year, he got his first opportunity to do play-by-play announcing for TROY when his professor Dr. Hanna Cooper, lecturer for the Hall School of Journalism and Communication, offered him to join her to call a softball game against Auburn.
“I’ve been doing softball for two years now, and Barry McKnight has kind of helped me to get more and more involved,” he said. “I called my first college basketball game last year, and I have done volleyball, soccer and baseball, including two ranked matchups last year with TROY and Coastal Carolina. This year, there was an opening for TROY Football, they needed a sideline reporter, so I was happy to do it and get as much experience as I could.”
Since then, Baxley has traveled with the TROY Men’s Basketball team to California for a string of games, including the upset victory over San Diego State in double overtime.
Baxley will be the first to say that all of the opportunities that he has received are not because of his own doing.
“Broadcasting is a very competitive field in general, and so connections are a huge part of it,” he explained. “From my TV production teacher at Wetumpka, to Doug Amos, who hosted a radio show in Montgomery, Jack Sadighian, the Voice of the Biscuits, Barry McKnight, the voice of TROY and Chris Stewart, the voice of Alabama and my professor, Dr. Hanna Cooper. All these people have helped to give me little bits of opportunities that have kind of built on, and it’s kind of a snowball effect that I’ve been really grateful for. But none of it happens without the help of people who are already in the industry that not only give you opportunities but also show you how to take advantage of the opportunities.”
For Baxley, balancing his role as a student-athlete with broadcasting opportunities has become increasingly challenging. He’s no longer searching for chances to call games, he’s managing them.
“If it’s something that you’re heavily invested in, which I am in this career path, you make the time, and you find ways to make it work, and this is what I want my whole career to be is broadcasting,” he said. “So that’s been my sole focus, and it’s taken priority over just about everything else at the moment.”
With his sights set on a career in broadcasting, Baxley plans to keep doing what brought him this far: saying yes to opportunities and learning from those who came before him.
