Faces of the Valley: Broadcast duo celebrates 25 years calling Highlands sporting events

Highlands sports broadcasters Mike Choma and Mike Pavlik still get chills when they enter the Golden Rams basketball court and see the 2020 WPIAL boys basketball championship banner hanging from the ceiling.

“That’s one I’ll never forget,” said Pavlik, 60, of Lower Burrell. “When we got back from that game and walked into the gym, they were blasting ‘We Are the Champions’ and the kids all climbed up a ladder to cut the nets. It was something.”

Pavlik and Choma joke that they have a face for radio — but here they are, marking 25 years doing play-by-play and color analysis for day-after YouTube replays and Tuesday night broadcasts on Comcast Channel 190. They are working with the district on livestream possibilities.

This year, when Highlands opens its football season Aug. 23 at home against Armstrong, Pavlik and Choma will be the longest-running current broadcast duo in the WPIAL.

“Nobody does what we do — every game for one school,” Choma said. “We have 800 games archived. If our kids want to go back and watch a game from when the stadium opened in 2002, they can do that. It’s great fun for everyone.”

Choma, 70, recently moved to Sarver after decades of living in Brackenridge. He served as dean of the Newport Business School in New Kensington for 42 years until it closed in 2014.

“I’m a teacher and a coach at heart,” Choma said.

That’s why they follow the golden rule of never criticizing a player.

“They’re in high school,” he said. “They’re doing the best they can.”

Choma and Pavlik each go back a long way in local sports history. They worked together for Comcast TV3 doing pregame and scoreboard shows for local games of the week before their first on-air presence together in 2000.

It was a basketball playoff game that saw underdog Highlands upset Huntingdon, 70-67. In an interesting twist, the school’s current football coach, Matt “Bones” Bonislawski, was a sophomore who started on the court for the Rams.

Two years later, the duo marked another career highlight that also involved Bonislawski.

“We beat West Mifflin on a last-second shot (by Bonislawski) in a tightly contested game to send us to the WPIAL championship,” Pavlik recalled. “He was swarmed by a sea of Highlands fans mid-court.”

Another memorable moment included Rams standout Micah Mason scoring 64 points in a win over Valley in a 2011 basketball game. It was the most points scored in more than 50 years of WPIAL competition.

Football has provided highlights for the pair, too.

Choma said the most remarkable game for him was in 2001 against top-seeded Uniontown.

“It was the playoffs and we were No. 16,” he said. “We came in on these nice charter buses and the opposing team started taunting us, saying they were gonna need the buses for the next week’s game.

“That was it for our kids. We were supposed to be the sacrificial lambs, but we went in like flames and pulled off one of the biggest upsets in WPIAL history with that win.”

George Guido, a veteran sports reporter and local historian from Lower Burrell, has known the pair for four decades.

“With them, timing is everything,” Guido said, adding he tunes in for the telecasts despite already knowing how the game turned out.

“They truly enjoy what they do,” he said. “I’ll tune in three or four days after a game just to acknowledge their insights and see what they had to say.”

Choma, who provides color for the broadcasts, considers himself an embedded reporter for the sports programs because of his role as former coach and current assistant with the middle school basketball team.

“I get to know them all when they’re seventh graders,” he said. “Teams don’t win, programs do. That’s why we have been so successful by developing and nurturing talent at a very young age.”

Pavlik, the play-by-play guy, is like a walking history book because of the tremendous research he does on Highlands and the opposing teams.

“We both love sports, and we prepare like heck,” he said.

Pavik said the pair’s likeable rapport is a result of respect.

“We argue on air but we never talk over each other,” he said. “We’re just two friends watching the game and describing it for other friends.”

With the WPIAL realignments this year, they expect some fireworks — which should mean entertaining broadcasts.

“We’ll be in with locals like Deer Lakes, Valley and Burrell,” Pavlik said. “That makes for a good time.”