Actually, it was a bit more dramatic than that, as Rochester Rhinos’ goalkeeper Neal Kitson scored this stoppage-time equalizer last Sunday evening to give the Rhinos a 2-2 draw with Antigua Barracuda FC in a USL Pro match.

It’s unlikely Kitson will get on the scoresheet again anytime soon (he’s the first Rochester ‘keeper ever to score), but he’ll be trying to keep the Harrisburg City Islanders off the score sheet when the two teams meet this Saturday at 5:30pm ET on the first telecast of the USL Pro Game of the Week on Fox Soccer.

Former Burnley/Fulham/Portsmouth/Edmonton Drillers goalkeeper Peter Mellor and I will have the call of the game and the rest of the USL Pro schedule on Fox Soccer this season. Tune in Saturday and every weekend between now and the USL Pro Championship Match on September 3.

The 43rd annual USA Team Handball National Club Championships get going in the morning at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah. For the third straight year, I’ll be broadcasting the men’s and women’s finals in the Elite Division on Sunday. You can catch the action at www.usateamhandball.org. The women’s final is at 1pm MT/4pm ET and the men’s final is at 3pm MT/5pm ET.

If you haven’t seen team handball before (not a surprise, there aren’t many opportunities), it’s a ton of fun when played well – a little like basketball, a little like indoor soccer, a little like water polo without the water. The best club teams in the country will be trying to knock off defending champ Los Angeles Team Handball Club in the men’s division, while the women’s division is wide open with defending champ Houston not returning to the tournament. Chicago Inter, which had won back-to-back titles before falling in last year’s women’s final, could return to the top spot, but not without a battle from the other teams in the draw.

Phoenix is back on the pro indoor soccer map. The Professional Arena Soccer League announced Wednesday it has granted Valley businessman Stuart Starkey (at left in the photo above, with PASL Commissioner Kevin Milliken) an expansion franchise that will begin play this fall in the PASL-Pro. (This is not a surprise to those of you who’ve been following along.)

The interesting thing is I’m listed as the voice of the team, the Phoenix Monsoon. While that may happen, I can tell you it hasn’t happened yet. Still, it’s nice to be considered.

Supposedly there’s going to be a press conference soon, probably at the team’s purported home, the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum. I’ll let you know when I know more.

Quick programming note: for a couple of hours, at least, I’m back in Major League Soccer. I’ll be calling the webcast of this afternoon’s New York Red Bulls/FC Dallas spring scrimmage live on www.newyorkredbulls.com starting at 4pm MT/6pm ET today from Grande Sports World in Casa Grande, Arizona.

In its primordial soup days, Major League Soccer went out of its way to distance itself from the way things were done in the rest of the world¹. From the garish uniforms to breaking ties through shootouts to best-of-three-games playoffs to tight restrictions on foreign players, the league emphasized its American-ness at all costs.

Now things are swinging the other way. We still don’t have single-table standings or promotion and relegation, but the shootout is long gone and even overtime is a thing of the past. And now we’re dealing with a second British Invasion that I’m far less enthused about than the first.

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I’ll be broadcasting the Class 4A Division II basketball championships this morning on www.aia365.com and KAZG-AM 1440. The girls’ game (at 10am MT, Noon ET) features defending state champion Chandler Seton Catholic against Thunderbird (you can see that game here) and the boys’ game (scheduled for Noon MT, 2pm ET) matches #1 seed Tucson Amphitheater against Tempe (you can see that one here). KAZG doesn’t stream its audio online, unfortunately, but if you could have listened, you could watch, I guess.

It was 15 years ago today – February 22, 1996 – that the Continental Indoor Soccer League announced an expansion franchise for Indianapolis, Indiana that eventually became known as the Twisters. I was fortunate enough to be the team’s radio announcer for the two summers that it played in the CISL, and am considering producing a documentary on the team’s short but interesting history.

You can see several video highlights from the Twisters’ two seasons on my YouTube channel, and I’m finishing the process of digitizing as many of the original radio broadcasts as still exist. Look for those as the summer goes on.

The latest installment of The Things We Do For Love features a look at my broadcast position for five games of this past weekend’s President’s Day Invitational youth hockey tournament.

Trust me: it’s even less fun than you might think calling five kids’ games from a corner of the rink at floor level starting at 6:50 am would be. But we got through it (thanks to the always-awesome Malik Robinson) and by the fifth game it was almost okay.

This weekend, things will get quite a bit better, as I’ll be calling the boys and girls 4A-II state basketball championships on www.aia365.com and KAZG-AM 1440 on Saturday. It’ll be in a real arena with a partner and multiple cameras and all that good stuff.

Ah, the life of a bigshot sports announcer. Analyst Chet Gole and I were fortunate enough to call a really good high school basketball game last night between Boulder Creek and Deer Valley on AIA365.com. The surroundings were kind of spartan, but we were thrilled to have the opportunity and hopefully will get to do more games together in the future. If you’re so inclined, you can see the game here.

Here’s a cautionary tale for all the broadcasters out there: It’s about Indianapolis Colts’ broadcaster Bob Lamey just crushing quarterback Peyton Manning off the air, which wouldn’t have been an issue, really, had a local Indianapolis radio station not played what he said on their air. (I don’t know if it was “inadvertently” played or “inadvertently” made available, the Indianapolis Star story on it could use some clarification.)

Having known Bob Lamey for many moons, I can tell you without question this was nothing more than the flip side of intense passion for something. There simply IS no one in our industry who cares more deeply for the team for which he broadcasts than Bob does. (Let’s put the wisdom of that aside for a second; yes, it’s homerism, that’s life, Bob’s too old to change now.)

Only something you deeply care about can move you to extremes of love and (at times) hatred. If you’ve ever had an argument with your wife, you know what I’m talking about.

The NFL has “figured Manning out?” Come on, that’s crazy talk. He’s been in the league 13 years, they figure people out before that. (And nobody wants to see Curtis Painter starting in the NFL. Not even Curtis Painter’s family. Nobody would suggest you bench Peyton Manning for Curtis Painter unless they were temporarily insane.) Manning is on the other side of thirty, he has no supporting cast and things happen. This was totally about frustration. Bob wants – and has always wanted – the Colts to win every game, either going away or in dramatic fashion and when they don’t, it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened.

Whether he should feel that way – or whether any of us should get to that point in our coverage of a team – isn’t my point. I personally can’t get THAT worked up about wins and losses, and if I had a Super Bowl ring, I’d probably be even less inclined to. But YMMV. Bob’s certainly does. You can call him whatever you like, but you can’t call him fake. What you hear is what you get.

I tell my students at ASU: If you make a living speaking into a microphone, always assume that sucker’s live and everybody can hear what you say. Not all of us have had long enough and impressive enough careers that we could survive ripping the star player of the team we work for.