Sept. 24, 2024-- Two years ago, Tyler Kopin was entering his junior year at High School South following a once-in-a-lifetime experience at a media and journalism conference in Washington, DC. The resulting feature story caught the attention of High School East broadcast journalism teacher Chip Phillips.

"I saw a story on our district website about Tyler attending a national journalism conference over one summer," Phillips said. "I contacted him to see if he was interested in commentating our football Game of the Week coverage. He jumped at the chance and quickly became one of our all-time best student announcers."

In addition to hockey, Kopin also announced soccer and basketball games for TRSTV.

Phillips and fellow TRSTV mentor Kyle Austin provided a platform and tutelage, but Kopin also "learned a LOT"-- according to Philips-- from his broadcasting partner Casey Kanarkowski, a teacher at Intermediate East. After graduating South this past June, Kopin began his collegiate career at Montclair State University where, armed with the knowledge gained and experience from his years at TRRS, he continues building a promising future career in broadcasting.

In fact, at MSU Kopin is already hosting the university's Game of the Week halftime show, as well as their New York Giants student podcast. This suits him well, as it combines his love of sports-- Kopin played baseball and ran track and field (right) for South-- and passion and talent for broadcasting.

"Tyler is a great student of broadcasting," Phillips said. "He's always asking for and listening to evaluation. He's a quick learner and aggressively takes on new opportunities."

Those opportunities seem boundless for the MSU freshman, and we wish Tyler Kopin the best as his continues his broadcasting journey. There's no doubt he'll never forget where it all started.