Calabasas senior sets sights high in sports

Calabasas High School senior Josh Mischel

Joshua Mischel, a senior at Calabasas High School this year, got a taste of what it would be like to be involved in pro sports when he was still a young boy. He tried out and won a contest in which the award was to work as the public address announcer at a Dodger game in 1994.

"When I was 10, I was fantasy P.A. announcer for the Dodgers for the ‘Think Blue Week,’" Mischel said. "I got to announce an inning of ‘now batting,’ and announce the starting lineups before the game. That was one of the highlights of my life."

Mischel learned that he had the composure and articulation to work the public address system for the Dodgers someday, but he also learned much more that day.

"I got there many hours before the game," he remembered. "And one of the nicest players was Raul Mondesi. It taught me that these were just average people. They’re just guys out there doing their job and having fun, and it was something that I just loved to be around."

After playing sports at Calabasas as a freshman and sophomore, Mischel realized that he wasn’t going to be a varsity athlete at the school, but didn’t let that detract him from pursuing sports.

He stayed involved during this, his senior year at Calabasas, by helping Rick Nathanson, the Coyote baseball coach, announce the team’s varsity football games in the fall. And now, this spring, Mischel has been the P.A. announcer for the Calabasas baseball team.

"He was very open to the idea," Mischel said of his inquiring of Nathanson whether he could use a voice after his 25 years of announcing Calabasas football games. "I helped out up there—seeing who made tackles, etc."

Mischel also does the morning announcements sometimes at CHS, telling the students about the outcomes of Coyote sporting events.

He has done all that along with taking four advanced placement classes, acquiring a 3.72 GPA and recently making the decision to turn down USC in favor of UC Davis, near Sacramento.

"A lot of things came together for me senior year," he said. "Rather than just being here to attend classes. It’s definitely helped me to get more into the school."

And about the choice to attend UC Davis, Mischel said, "It’s a huge campus but it’s very much a college town. It’s a very nice atmosphere."

One of the people, along with his parents, who helped in making the decision of where to attend college next year was David Carter, who Mischel met at a seminar, the National Sports Marketing Education Foundation.

"That was an opportunity to meet people that I wanted to be in contact with for the long haul," said Mischel.

He also met Derrick Hall, the Dodgers V.P. of Communications, and now has contact with Carter and Hall about once a week by phone. He meets with Carter about once a month for dinner, as well.

Through Carter, a meeting was set up in which Mischel met with eight people with different roles inside the Dodger organization, a whirlwind affair that took five hours and left an impression on the high school senior.

"I had a meeting with eight Dodger executives one day before a Dodger game," Mischel said, "which was unreal because it was eight people from different facets of the organization. So I knew what community relations does here, what communications does.

"I knew that there was so many things on the other side of sports than just playing," he said. "That was five hours of me sitting in one room, up behind home plate."

On top of all that Mischel has interned at one of L.A.’s most popular radio stations, KFI, and was recently offered a job to work with the station’s promotions’ department this summer.

At KFI, one of Mischel’s jobs as an intern was to screen phone calls.

"One of the special things about life is people interaction," he said. "I learned what happens behind-the-scenes of radio … how do you screen out bad calls. I learned to book guests for radio shows. It was just a very positive experience."

How is life going these days for Josh Mischel?

"There’s just a lot of things clicking right now, and that’s making it good to be alive," he said.