He never takes a day off. In his 25 years as the voice of the Eagles, calling nearly 300 football and over 600 basketball gtames, Larry Weir has not missed an EWU game unless he was calling another EWU game.

The two-time Washington State Broadcaster of the Year’s 25 stable, dedicated years as the Eagles’ radio voice is rare in an industry that does not lend itself to establishing roots. Weir, like most radio personalities, had to move around frequently in his other careers as a radio station disc jockey, news anchor and news director.

Weir grew up on a wheat farm and cattle ranch in Waitsburg, Washington, near Walla Walla. The only child of Carol and the late Carl Weir, he developed his love of sports from his father, watching television and especially listening to the radio. He played baseball, football and basketball at Waitsburg High School before graduating in 1979.

“There were no kids around me,” said Weir. “So when I went out to shoot hoops or throw a ball around, I did the play-by-play in my head as I was playing these games against myself.” The radio format was instrumental in Weir’s development. “I spent a lot of time listening to Bob Robertson call WSU games, and decided that was what I wanted to do with my life,” he said. He attended the Ron Bailie School of Broadcasting in Spokane after graduation.

His broadcasting career got its start as the result of a geographical accident. “My uncle lived across the street from the guy who owned the radio station in Toppenish, Washington,” said Weir. “They were out on the street one day, telling stories, and the owner mentioned that he didn’t have a play-by-play guy for games one upcoming weekend.”

His uncle knew a guy. “[I] attended a … district playoff basketball game at WAU where [I] sat at the top of Beasley Coliseum and did a play-by-play, speaking into a cassette recorder,” Weir said. He sent the demo tape to his uncle’s neighbor and he was hired to fill in, calling play-by-play for a regional Native American basketball tournament. Weir’s career was underway.

Weir was attending classes at Walla Walla Community College at the time. The station owner, impressed with his work, hired him to work games on the weekends. “I did that for a couple of years in the fall and winter,” said Weir. “[I would] go to college during the week, drive to Toppenish on Friday, work games and two on-air shifts [as a disc jockey] and drive home Sunday afternoon.”

After earning his associate’s degree from Walla Walla Community College, Weir enrolled at EWU in the fall of 1982, but academics were not at the top of his priority list. “I was not a very motivated student and really wanted to get to the next part of life,” he said. A co-worker from the Toppenish station, who had moved to KMWX in Yakima, offered Weir a full-time position as a disc jockey. He took it.

Weir’s non-EWU broadcasting career took him all over Washington’s Palouse region, bouncing between stations in Yakima, Pullman, Colfax and Walla Walla. At KCLX in Colfax he spun vinyl records well into the 1990s. “We were probably one of the last stations to transition to CDs,” he recalled. After an eight year stint at Pullman’s KQQQ, where he was the morning news anchor, Weir took a job in Spokane at KGA as its news director in 2006. After a three year break from radio news he took a news director position in Elko, Nevada, in 2011. Unable to find permanent housing — Elko was in the middle of a gold rush — he returned to Spokane the following year.

Weir is not working in radio news at the moment but he said he keeps busy. In addition to covering EWU football and basketball on various ESPN platforms, he hosts weekly radio shows and podcasts with EWU coaches and staff, produces “Eagle Minute” programming and other advertising content, calls play-by-play for the Greater Spokane League and the Spokane Empire, emcees the annual Hall of Fame ceremony, and handles various sporting events for SWX TV.

With his long, productive career still going strong, Weir took a moment to reflect. “One of the best things about this job [is] getting to see former players or coaches and have a chance to catch up and talk for a while,” he said.

Last month he was able to share lunch with former head basketball coach Steve Aggers during a trip to Northern Colorado. “I hadn’t seen him in 10 years,” Weir said.

He said he enjoyed traveling with the teams, and how the players accepted him as one of the guys. Though at times being one of the guys could be hazardous. “[Once] when I woke up there was a piece of paper rolled up to look like a cigarette hanging out of my mouth,” he remembered. “After dealing with that, when I went to move my feet my shoestrings were tied to the metal part under the aisle seat in front of me.”

One of Weir’s few regrets is not pursuing his education. “I tell kids at every opportunity to go to college and get a degree,” he said.
Still, he said he is grateful to the people over the years who have trusted him with the microphone. “I get paid to watch ballgames,” Weir said. “How lucky am I?”