Grapevine, TX
Mitch competed with Invictus Fides from 2011 to 2015 in Team Policy, Parli, Extemp, and Impromptu. Mitch’s family chose homeschooling after he briefly attended a private school and discovered that it did not meet all of his needs – he needed the flexibility that homeschooling provided to play baseball at a high level. Friends from a local homeschool co-op encouraged the Mason family to try Stoa speech and debate and the Masons visited a local tournament to watch and time rounds. Mitch was instantly hooked. Speech and debate seemed like the ideal extracurricular activity because it would develop the skills that Mitch would need to pursue his true passions.
Dreams of future career plans pre-dated Mitch’s years in Stoa. Mitch knew he wanted to work in sports broadcasting from the time he was little. He says that he started his broadcasting journey at a young age, “I would fall asleep listening to Texas Rangers games on the radio and knew that I wanted to be like Eric Nadel (the Baseball Hall of Fame radio broadcaster) one day.”
But it is speech and debate that Mitch credits for giving him the communications skills necessary for the job. As he explains, “Before speech and debate, I was just another kid grinding away at my game. I was playing baseball every day and trying to get good enough to play in college. I couldn’t hold a conversation with anyone I did not know and certainly did not have much knowledge on any topic outside of sports. Speech and debate taught me how to think and gave me a verbal eloquence that my career is based on today. I truly would not be in the position that I am without my time in Stoa.”
After competing in Stoa, Mitch attended Texas A&M University, where he received his B.A. in Communications with a minor in Business in 2019. At A&M, Mitch gained experience in sports broadcasting. He is now pursuing an M.S. in Sports Management at Dallas Baptist University and expects to graduate in 2021.
Currently, Mitch works as the Head Graduate Assistant at Dallas Baptist University in the Athletics Department. Specifically, he works in Media Relations as an author and a play-by-play broadcaster for soccer, basketball, and baseball. He also serves as the head writer for Golf and Tennis. Mitch comments, “Working in NCAA athletics is a dream come true.” He hopes to get his start at a major D1 university when his contract with Dallas Baptist University expires and dreams of being a head play by-play broadcaster in the future.
Mitch urges the Stoa community to continue to engage those students who, like him, might pursue speech and debate less strongly than other activities like athletics: “It changed my life, and I know there are and will be more with stories like mine.”