Christopher Pennant has been the public address announcer for Forward Madison FC this season, calling goals, substitutions and cards for a club whose profile has grown steadily since they debuted in 2019. He does the job from Breese Stevens Field on game nights, but lives in Chicago and drives up for every home date.
Pennant discussed his approach to the job in an interview for the 608 Soccer Show.
Listen to the full interview:
“My call time is an hour and a half before before kickoff,” Pennant said. “So for a Saturday game that starts at seven, I’ve got to be there at 5:30. So I’ll leave the city around 2:00, head up I-90, and then get into town.”
He spends much of that lead time preparing pronunciations for both teams’ rosters, a task he said takes more effort in the third-tier USL League One than it might in a higher-profile league.
“It’s fun for League One because there’s a little less spotlight, so you have to dig a little deeper,” Pennant said. “The best one is if they have an interview, something like this (on a podcast), and they say their own name out loud. That is the holy grail.”
This season, Pennant began adding Spanish-language announcements for goals, an idea he said came from wanting to serve the club’s Spanish-speaking fans and had not been requested by Forward Madison’s front office.
“No, honestly, this is why I enjoy Forward,” he said. “They give me free rein to experiment, to try some things.”
He said he studied Spanish for about 16 years and has been working to extend the practice to substitutions and other in-game announcements, including yellow cards.
Pennant holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Bradley University and a master’s degree in journalism from the Medill School at Northwestern University. He said that training shapes how seriously he treats accuracy in the booth, particularly around identifying players correctly.
“The most significant thing for me is being exact,” Pennant said. “If you say somebody’s name wrong and you don’t fix it, at least then I feel like you didn’t prepare yourself. You didn’t do your job.”
He said he checks pronunciations with players directly when he gets the chance, telling them he wants to be sure he’s saying their names correctly, and pushes back on the idea that getting a name wrong is a small mistake.
“I feel like that is a credibility issue at that point,” Pennant said. “You might have done this research on the game, you might know the tendencies of players, team tactics, all of that that adds into the game. But if you say somebody’s name wrong and you don’t fix it, then I feel like you didn’t do your job. Your main thing is to correctly identify the people on the field.”
He said he thinks about the players’ families when he’s preparing, not just the fans in the stadium.
“I don’t know how much you watch back the game itself, and you’re listening for the commentary, but your mom probably is, or your grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and they hear that and they’re like, ‘Well, who is this guy? How did he mess my baby’s name up?'” Pennant said. “So I really want that to be part of my process. You vet things. You track it down. If I hear somebody say the name once, I’m going to check again to make sure, find another source, find more sources, so you get things as right as you possibly can.”
That instinct extends beyond names. Pennant said he weighs the same immediacy-versus-accuracy tension that has shaped journalism since the rise of 24-hour news when deciding how quickly to make an in-game call, such as identifying which player picked up a yellow card.
“I want to make sure I have it exactly right before I say it because I could see the referee point to what looks like (Forward Madison midfielder) Jackson Castro, but it could be Roman (Torres),” Pennant said. “If I haven’t seen the number, or if I haven’t gotten the communication like, ‘Oh, this is who got the yellow card,’ then I’m waiting to say it. So if there’s ever a delay and people are wondering, that’s the reason why. I want to make sure I’ve got it right.”
Pennant said the standard he holds himself to doesn’t change based on the level of competition or whether the assignment is paid.
“I take it seriously any time I come into the booth and I clock in and the microphone’s in front of me,” he said. “Whether it’s high school, roller derby — that’s a volunteer sport, so nobody’s ever getting paid for that — but I’ve always tried to do my absolute best job. And my friends and colleagues will tell you I’m the hardest on myself with this. If I miss something, I take it back with me… I’m always trying to get better.”
Pennant, who was born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, has worked in public address and broadcast announcing since 2011, starting with roller derby and later picking up assignments including high school sports at St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago and, previously, ultimate frisbee. He also hosts an intermittently active podcast called “What’s Good Radio,” a name he carried over from his college radio show and revived during the pandemic.
He said he played soccer growing up and watched Chicago Fire teams featuring DaMarcus Beasley, Peter Nowak and Brian McBride, but drifted away from the sport before the 2010 World Cup drew him back in as a fan. He said he picked an English club to follow based partly on his father’s Jamaican heritage, landing on Sheffield Wednesday after finding that Jamaican international Jermaine Johnson played there.
“My father was Jamaican, so is there any team with any Jamaican players?” Pennant said, describing his search. “Not only did they have Jermaine Johnson, they had this cool story about their ground that they played at since 1895.”
The same drive for precision shows up in how he tracks players during fast-moving action, a habit he picked up from a fellow announcer for Chicago’s ultimate frisbee team. Pennant writes down identifying details — sock length, shoe color, hairstyle — for players he expects to be involved in scoring plays, so he isn’t relying on jersey numbers alone when the ball is bouncing around the box.
“You’ve got to be exact, so that helps me be accurate,” Pennant said.
Pennant said the freedom Forward Madison gives him to try new approaches, along with what he described as the seriousness with which the club and its staff approach their work, is part of what keeps him engaged in the role.
Pennant’s next day in the booth will be Wednesday as Forward Madison hosts One Knoxville.
