Kerri Kosten has been interested in sports her whole life, but when she was 15, West Virginia University’s play-by-play announcer Tony Caridi, invited her to join him on his Statewide Sports Line radio show. He told her then he thought she should be a sportscaster. That comment changed her outlook on life.
She writes headlines for WAJR-AM in Morgantown and she writes “glogs” or game logs, with play-by-play sports information on the internet.
“People who don’t get to hear it can see it,” Keri Kosten said, “so it makes me the eyes of the game on the internet.”
From covering WVU men’s basketball, to the post game news conference, she does it all, but here is the catch: Kerri Kosten is blind.
“There’s going to be challenges but you have to fight through them,” she said.
Not only has she fought through the challenges, she has embraced them. She has turned her blindness into her own blog cleverly titled ”’The Way I See It’... The Perspective from a Blind WVU Sports Fan.”
Kosten uses a program called JAWS or Job Access With Speech, that reads her the screen. Then she writes her story.
“When I hit ‘update live,’ it goes on the site,” she explained.
Watching her work, it is clear Kosten loves every bit of what she is doing.
“Because it has to do with sports and also that I’m informing readers,” she added. “After I post anything the readers are informed of that and that makes me feel proud.”
After our interview, the WVU sophomore headed to class. Her major is Broadcast News. After that class she will be back to work at her WAJR internship, covering Wednesday night’s Capital Classic between WVU and Marshall. To read Kerri’s blog click on the link below.