Dylan Coyle envisioned his future the moment he heard legendary Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas make the call of his career and announce the team’s 2008 World Series victory.
“He connected the fans to that moment,” recalled Coyle, KLN ’21, a journalism major who is the 2018 recipient of the Gene Hart Scholarship named for the longtime voice of the Philadelphia Flyers. “I want to be connected to the moment, and the sportscaster is the maker of the moment.”
A staunch ice hockey fan, Coyle, 19, dreams of calling Flyers games someday.
Since high school, he has honed his delivery and writing— and also organized amateur ice hockey events at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, the Santander Arena in Reading and the outdoor rink in Hershey. He’s the former president of Good Night, Good Hockey, a website he and some friends developed in 2016 that reports news of the Flyers, Lehigh Valley Phantoms,
Hershey Bears and Washington Capitals. The site takes its name from Hart’s closing catchphrase. Coyle left the site in January to write for Sons of Penn, a Flyers blog, while also working as a broadcasting intern for the Reading Royals, a Flyers affiliate in the East Coast Hockey League. At Temple, he’s the media director for the university’s ice hockey club team and the assistant sports director for WHIP student radio. Including his internship with Reading, Coyle will be accruing 18 credits in the fall.
The Hart family selected Coyle among three “highly motivated,” high GPA finalists who have been “proving themselves as budding sports broadcast journalists,” according to an email from journalism Professor Laurence Roy Stains.
The $10,000 scholarship is awarded to a Klein College student one year and a Boyer College of Music student the next (Gene Hart reportedly was a huge opera fan). Coyle, a first-generation college student, said the money means he won’t need a loan for the fall semester and adds he’s honored to have won a scholarship named after the voice of the Flyers.
Professor Stains informed him about the scholarship on the very day Coyle and 27 other coworkers learned their temporary summer jobs would end sooner than promised. Another opportunity arrived the next day, when Coyle learned the sports channel Eleven Sports wanted coverage of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Junior NBA World Championship Tournament in King of Prussia.
“It threw me onto the fire,” he said about the assignment reporting 14 basketball games over the three-day tournament in June.
Originally published at Klein.Temple.edu