Rowan student Allan Wylie recently added calling baseball games to his resumé. But there’s one catch — he’s blind.

The game is tied in the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded. But you’re in the car, stuck in traffic, listening to the game.

Your team is down by one in the fourth quarter, and the quarterback receives the snap for a two-point conversion. But your feed just cut out, so you resort to the audio of the game.

For Rowan rising sophomore Allan Wylie, a sports broadcaster who has been blind since birth, traffic jams or faulty feeds are no obstacle. All he needs to do is listen.

“If I weren’t able to listen to a sport, I wouldn’t be here, really,” Wylie said. “I mean, the audio component of the broadcast is everything to me.”

Wylie’s passion for sports broadcasting started when he was a kid, when he would trick his parents into thinking he was sleeping.

“I would listen to Cleveland baseball games when I was little, when I would go to sleep,” Wylie said. “I would listen to Scott Zurilla on the postgame shows. … I was sitting in my bed, or lying in my bed, trying to go to sleep, supposedly, and listening to him talk about Harry Irving and the young cast of players making their mark.”

Less than a decade later, Wylie turned his sneaky tendencies into a budding career.

In March 2023, Wylie called his first NBA G League game, for the Cleveland Charge, as a junior in high school.

“The team I was doing it for got blown out, by the way,” Wylie said. “But the reason I loved it is because I did it with Scott Zurilla, who is a guy that I looked up to when I was little. I would listen to him doing Cavaliers postgame shows. … It was surreal for me.”

Because Wylie relies solely on audio, preparation for games is different. Before broadcasting a game, Wylie will listen to highlights and replays of past games, read previews of the teams, and prepare a comprehensive list of trends and stats.

“[Rowan] trusts me with doing games, and [Rowan] allows me and gives me chances, and people are giving me pointers along the way,” Wylie said. “That’s definitely a huge thing” for my confidence.

And those pointers come from all the people that Wylie has in his corner. Neil Hartman, the senior director of the center for sports communication at Rowan who was a voice on sports telecasts in Philadelphia for decades, is at the top of that list.

Hartman and Wylie first met when Wylie, then a sophomore in high school, attended one of Hartman’s broadcasting camps in Chicago.

“The second day, I went to his dad, and I said, ‘Listen, I think this young man has a huge future,’” Hartman said. “He was engaging, knowledgeable, and comfortable doing all these things that sighted campers were doing. It was remarkable.”

Three years after that initial meeting, Wylie started to express interest in attending Rowan, despite offers from a number of other colleges across the nation.

“When he decided to come here, we were thrilled to have him, and he hasn’t missed a beat,” Hartman said. “He’s done a really good job getting involved since he’s arrived on campus.

“There [are] a lot of opportunities for our students here in this program. And Allan is just another one of those students. To be honest, from the semester when he arrived, he kind of had a village that kind of took care of him. … We’ve really done a good job of figuring out how to make it work through the Office of Disability Services here on campus. Allan’s network of friends on campus has really grown.”

While Wylie has quickly immersed himself in Rowan athletics and all his first year of college has had to offer, it didn’t come without challenges.

“He walks in a room and everyone knows, ‘Oh yeah, there’s the blind guy,’” Hartman said.

But Wylie thrives on the ability to adapt.

“When he starts in on discussions, he’s really well-prepared,” Hartman said. “He’s very much found a way to include himself in everyday life here on campus, and that’s a tribute to him, but also, I think, to the community that we have here, particularly in the sports communication media program, and how they’ve all embraced [him].”

This ability to adapt is something Wylie has carried with him, from sneaking a radio under the covers to his academic journey and now into the early stages of what he hopes will become his professional career.

“You’d have zero idea that the kid is blind,” Hartman said. “He’s done really well academically. He’s assimilated himself well … and then you give him these opportunities to do professional baseball, basketball [at 18], and it’s really remarkable.”