Pierce Lisner, 17, longs to be the next Chuck Morgan. His bellowing voice makes you think a pro is in the press box announcing games–not a baby-faced senior.
LITTLE ELM, Texas — The sounds of an aluminum bat cracking a baseball echo through ‘The Backyard’ at Little Elm High School on a Friday afternoon.
‘The Backyard,’ is what the school and players call the baseball stadium.
It’s 4:29 p.m., and a JV baseball game is set to start in one minute. Suddenly, from the stadium speakers, a silky and polished voice comes over the PA, letting folks know the game is about to begin.
The names of the starting lineups for both teams are read, and the first batter steps up to the plate.
Again, you hear from the speakers the name and position of the player.
The bellowing voice sounds eerily similar to Chuck Morgan, the PA announcer for the Texas Rangers. You can tell, especially for the home team, the batters walk into the box — feeling a little taller.
After a few batters, someone with golden pipes is again heard on the PA reading an ad for a local HVAC company.
You start to wonder: who in the hell is announcing a JV game this dang good on a Friday? It sounds like someone who knows what they’re doing, someone who has been doing this for years.
Surely, it can’t be some baby-faced kid with a mullet, bottle cap glasses and the crushing inability to grow facial hair.
Well, turns out 17-year-old Pierce Lisner had me fooled.
“I would love facial hair, actually,” Lisner said. “A mustache is my goal, but I can’t grow one, and it makes me really mad.”
Lisner is a Little Elm High School senior and the voice of the Lobos. He’s used to people thinking he’s an older and accomplished professional, instead of some wiry kid in a T-shirt and gym shorts.
“People will hear me announce a game, and they’ll want to meet me after to tell me how good of a job I did,” Lisner said. “They have no idea I’m in high school.”
“They say, ‘Man, I thought you were a 40-year-old man who ate a pack of cigarettes for breakfast!’ I say thanks,” Lisner said with a laugh. “I can never tell if it’s a compliment or not.”
Lisner’s story is pretty cool because it starts with him going from the bench of the JV baseball team during his sophomore year to the booth.
“My baseball career wasn’t working out. I was pitching on the mound and wasn’t doing well,” he said.
But someone not showing up to one of his games to announce, opened a brand new door for the teen.
“They needed someone to announce the game, and I just raised my hand and said, ‘I guess I’ll do it,” Lisner said. “I was shaking the entire time but when I was done, I came back down, and the coaches told me I was really good at it.”
Lisner gave up sports at the end of his sophomore year and started announcing JV and varsity games full-time.
But not before recording a pretty hilarious moment in his sports career when he was announcing a game in his uniform and had to stop midway to take the mound for a pitching change.
Lisner threw a few strikeouts and then went back to announcing for the rest of the game.
“It was pretty wild,” he said.
The teen also did broadcasting work for the football and basketball teams, once giving up sports. Not only that, he met Chuck Morgan along the way in his high school career.
The Rangers legend often does meet and greets before games.
“Sometimes, when I’m announcing batters, it can come out as Chuck,” Lisner said with a chuckle. “The compliments are my favorite part, and I was like, this is what I want to do.”
Once Lisner graduates, he plans to attend Collin County Community College and transfer to UNT. Honing his craft will be a significant focus in college, and I’ll likely hear his voice again someday.
“I just want to throw my voice out there,” Lisner said confidently.