Bruner’s Beat: A Final Farewell

by Evan Bruner

For the first time in 17 years, I’m going into the fall without having to worry about school, and the feeling has made me uneasy. For almost as long as I can remember, I had classes of some sort consuming me during the weeks and tormenting me during the weekends. More specifically, this is the first time in three years that I won’t be spending the fall at WONC, broadcasting football games, co-hosting a show, or writing my sports blog. As a transfer student, the radio station played a significant role in my decision to come to North Central College. I had always loved to share my thoughts but didn’t have a true platform to voice them. 

At the beginning of my time at WONC, I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do. I started off doing sportscasts, then joined a sports talk show, and by the end of my first semester, I was calling games. By the spring, I had my first DJ shift, and the following school year, I started Bruner’s Beat. My paid writing gigs often gave me a very narrow range of topics, limiting my articles to a couple of teams and events. Bruner’s Beat was an opportunity to branch out and discuss what was truly on my mind. I was able to cover a wide canvas ranging from MMA to women’s basketball. There was something cathartic about pulling up my computer and just typing away. It never felt like a job or chore as much as a hobby or passion project. 

I wrote many of these articles unsure of the target audience. That’s still something that crosses my mind now. Who would care what some know-it-all at a college radio station thought about the NBA’s MVP rules or the decline of the running back position? But it was never about clicks or awards. It was just me writing for myself and my station.

Only four months removed from my college graduation, it’s too soon to make any assertions about WONC’s impact on my life and career. It takes years, if not decades, to fully connect the dots. However, I can say with complete confidence that I got a lot out of these three years, and certainly more than I anticipated. I called games for four different North Central sports teams, worked halftime shows, operated the board, worked DJ shifts, co-hosted my own sports show, took production classes, and wrote articles for our website. I wouldn’t say that I loved all of it or that I was that great at everything. In fact, there were only a couple of facets of radio where I felt that I truly excelled. With that said, these experiences did a lot for someone who enrolled at North Central with a select set of skills.

I will forever appreciate WONC for what it is as a station and the people that comprise it. It went a long way in defining my college experience and gave me years’ worth of memories and skills that will never be forgotten.