Highlands sportscasters Mike Choma and Mike Pavlik still get goosebumps when they walk onto the Golden Rams basketball court and see the 2020 WPIAL boys basketball championship banner hanging from the ceiling.

“I’ll never forget that,” said Pavlik, 60, of Lower Burrell. “When we came back from the game and went to the gym, they were loudly playing ‘We Are the Champions’ and all the kids climbed up a ladder to cut the nets. It was special.”

Pavlik and Choma joke that they have a face for radio – but here they have been for 25 years, doing live and color analysis for YouTube reruns the next day and the Tuesday night broadcasts on Comcast Channel 190. They are working with the district on livestream opportunities.

When Highlands opens its football season this year on August 23 at home against Armstrong, Pavlik and Choma will be the longest-tenured commentating duo in the WPIAL.

“Nobody does what we do – every game for a 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. It’s great fun for everyone.”

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

“At heart, I am a teacher and coach,” Choma said.

Therefore, 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 both have a long history in local sports, working together for Comcast TV3 doing pregame and scoreboard broadcasts for local games of the week before going on air together for the first time in 2000.

It was a basketball playoff game in which underdog Highlands defeated Huntingdon 70-67. Interestingly, the school’s current football coach, Matt “Bones” Bonislawski, was a sophomore who played for the Rams.

Two years later, the duo achieved another career highlight, in which Bonislawski was also involved.

“We beat West Mifflin in a hard-fought game on a last-second shot (from Bonislawski) that catapulted us to the WPIAL championship,” Pavlik recalled. “He was surrounded on the halfway line by a sea of ​​Highland fans.”

Another memorable moment came when Rams star Micah Mason scored 64 points in a 2011 win over Valley, the most points in over 50 years of WPIAL competition.

There were also highlights for the couple in football.

Choma said the most notable game for him was against top-ranked Uniontown in 2001.

“It was the playoffs and we were No. 16,” he said. “We arrived on these beautiful charter buses and the opposing team started taunting us, saying they needed the buses for the game next week.”

“That was it for our guys. 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 this win.”

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

“With them, timing is everything,” Guido said, adding that he tunes in to the broadcasts even though he already knows how the game will end.

“They really enjoy what they do,” he said. “I tune in three or four days after a game just to get their insights and hear what they have to say.”

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

“I get to know them all when they’re in seventh grade,” he said. “It’s not teams that win, it’s programs. That’s why we’ve been so successful, by developing and nurturing talent at a very young age.”

Pavlik, the commentator of the moves, is like a walking history book due to his extensive research on Highlands and the opposing teams.

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

Pavik said the couple’s friendly relationship was the result of respect.

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

With the re-orientation of the WPIAL this year, they are expecting a fireworks display – and that should mean entertaining shows.

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