BY JAMES BESSETTE

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COVENTRY — Starting tonight, there will be another option for fans to catch a Coventry basketball game if fans can’t make it to C. Arthur Flori Gymnasium.

Radio station WCVY 91.5 FM – a student-run station at Coventry High School – will broadcast all of the home games that take place on weeknights for the boys’ and a good portion of the girls’ basketball teams during the season.

Ted Tracy, a graduate from Coventry High back in 2005, will be taking the role of play-by-play commentator and former Coventry volleyball coach Bob Messier will provide color analysis during the broadcasts, beginning with the Coventry-St. Raphael game tonight at 7 p.m.

This will be the first time a Coventry sporting event will be broadcasted over the air since the 2002 Thanksgiving Day game and it will be the first time that basketball will be featured in over a decade after gaining a lot of interest from coaches and faculty within the school, as well as working out many problems with the station itself.

“This was something that I wanted to do since I was in school at Coventry,” Tracy said. “I was told at first that ‘the component wasn’t working and we’re trying to fix it.’ It wasn’t really going anywhere. I know (Coventry head boys’ coach) Bill Tarvis was very interested in something like this. Him and I had talked a few times and, finally, they have a new person running the radio station this year and we finally got it working. I talked to (Coventry athletic director) Chuck Jones and asked if ‘if we get it working, can we do it?’ He said ‘absolutely’ and we’re all set to go on the air.”

According to Tracy, the games are only available over the radio during the week because the license the station has with the Federal Communications Commission only allows transmission from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday. Local tournaments – such as the upcoming Coventry Credit Union Holiday Basketball Classic – or any games taking place on the weekends will be unavailable over the air.

Some of the reasons as to why the radio broadcasts of sporting events were put on the backburner were because of a constant changeover of leadership with the station itself. When the school used to broadcast games, a gentleman by the name of Ken Brady, a former faculty advisor who ran the station for almost 20 years, was in charge of overseeing events being presented over the air, whether it was football or basketball.

After Brady retired a few years ago, a large number of advisors came and went at the station, causing a bit of influx regarding to a lack of direction, as well as just keeping the station in tact with the normal “rock” format, which left the sports end of the broadcasts out in the cold.

But, with the help of Jones and current station advisors Ron Guillemette and Jim Murphy, as well as dealing with a few technical roadblocks, WCVY will be back inside the Flori Gymnasium bringing the action live.

As far as the broadcasts, themselves, Tracy said that there will be a brief pregame, about 10-15 minutes before the start of tonight’s game, outlining the potential season the Oakers might have in comparison to a year ago. Then, the game itself will be on the air and then a brief postgame show, commenting on the events that took place in the game, replaying the final numbers and, if time allows, interviewing a player or two, or maybe a coach – either Tarvis or Coventry girls’ coach Chris Luppe.

Tracy also said that depending on how the broadcasts go for basketball this season, there is a possibility that WCVY will extend the broadcasts into the Spring season and possibly into the Fall season.