Each year the IBCA Board of Directors selects individuals from each of the three IBCA Districts to receive the Virgil Sweet Distinguished Service Award. The award, named in honor of the former IBCA Executive Director who passed away in June 2023, is given to individuals who have provided meritorious service in the promotion of basketball in the state of Indiana. The award began in 1974 and was renamed in Sweet’s honor in 1986.
The winners for 2025 are Harold Welter of Knox, Greg Rakestraw of Indianapolis and Mark Brochin of Washington.
District 1: Harold Welter, WKVI Radio, Knox
Harold Welter has been best-known as a play-by-play announcer who began covering high school sports in 1965 at WRIN Radio in Rensselaer and continued at WLOI Radio in LaPorte. Over 57 years and in part of six decades, he broadcast more than 3,500 sporting events, traveling more than 250,000 miles to 147 different locations to call games.
Since establishing WKVI Radio in Knox as its first general manager at age 24, Welter has concentrated on covering high school sports at nine area schools – Knox, North Judson, Oregon-Davis, Winamac, West Central, John Glenn, Culver Community, South Central (Union Mills) and Tri-Township (formerly known as LaCrosse). Welter’s radio play-by-play on WKVI has been featured on ABC-TV’s “NightLine” and his signature shout of “unbelievable” when witnessing exciting plays has been a familiar refrain for three generations of players in the Kankakee Valley area.
Welter stepped away from his radio career in 1973 to become a congressional assistant in Washington, D.C. He returned to Knox in 1975 to start Financial Partners of Knox LLC and to return to the airwaves on WKVI. Welter has also covered college sports, but his main focus has been high school sports. He has done play-by-play for basketball, football, baseball, softball, volleyball and wrestling.
He also has hosted the “Saturday Sportsline” coaches’ interview show on WKVI for more than 50 years with guests including six Hall of Fame coaches. He continues to contribute to the Saturday show by interviewing players he has covered with a weekly segment called “Where Are They Now?” He has used radio sportscasting as a positive vehicle for listeners and for promoting young people. He has taught classes for high school-age students at his church and frequently speaks with high school classes about life’s challenges and their destination of greatness.
Welter received an IHSAA Distinguished Media Service Award in 1989-90. The 1963 Knox High School graduate was inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1994. He received the Broadcaster of the Year Award in 2004 from the Indiana Football Coaches Association, which was memorialized in the Congressional Record for the 108th Congress by Indiana representative Steve Buyer. Welter also was inducted into the Indiana Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame in 2023.
He and his wife, Becky, have four children, Susan, Laura, Cheryl and Nathan – and five grandchildren. Cheryl was killed in an auto accident the night before homecoming during her senior year of high school. In memory of her, Welter and his wife established the Cheryl Lyn Welter Charitable Foundation to help teachers who work with underprivileged children in rural Indiana schools. Welter published a book in 2024, “Joy in the Mourning (Growing Through Grief),” which tells Cheryl’s story and the story of how and why the Foundation was established.
District 2: Greg Rakestraw, ISC Sports Network, Indianapolis
Greg Rakestraw's love of Indiana high school basketball began in kindergarten when his beloved Lanesville Eagles had one of their best seasons in school history, going 18-3. Even an opening-night sectional loss to end that magical season couldn't dampen Rakestraws's love for high school hoops. Neither would a 2-19 finish the following season.
Rakestraw was hooked – and has been for the past 43 years.
Rakestraw's playing days at Lanesville only lasted two seasons before he turned his athletic exploits to focusing on baseball and tennis, the latter being the sport he played collegiately at the University of Indianapolis. But Rakestraw would stay connected to basketball at LHS by serving as the mascot, the public address announcer and writing about the team for the school newspaper and yearbook.
Once Rakestraw made the move to Indianapolis in the fall of 1994, his basketball horizons expanded to quickly serve as one of the voices of U of I games on WICR radio. Before graduating from UIndy in 1998, Rakestraw began working on Johnson County high school basketball broadcasts on WPZZ Radio based in Franklin, which eventually led him to being named the program director of what would become ESPN 950 in Indianapolis in the summer of 2002.
At that point, Rakestraw began to leave a greater impact on the high school sports scene in Indianapolis as live high school play-by-play was a staple of what 950 would broadcast on a regular basis. He served as the voice of Roncalli High School football for four years, including three state championship appearances. He also called IUPUI men’s basketball, home and road, for nine seasons.
Rakestraw moved to HomeTown Sports in 2009, where his focus shifted to multiple high school sports, including basketball. He served as the television play-by-play voice for the Class A and Class 2A boys' basketball State Finals in 2010, and he has been on the call of at least two basketball state championship games every year since (except 2020 when no boys’ basketball title games were played because of COVID). Over the past 25 years, he has called more than 200 IHSAA state championship events, including basketball, football, volleyball, baseball, softball, soccer and wrestling.
These days, Rakestraw serves as vice president of the ISC Sports Network, which produces more than 50 telecasts a year on WNDY-TV in Indianapolis. He also serves as the lead voice of the IHSAA Champions Network in terms of play-by-play and hosting numerous pairings show, is the preseason voice of Indianapolis Colts games on television and has been the voice of the Indy Eleven since the franchise was founded in 2014. In basketball alone, Rakestraw calls more than 100 games each year, ranging from high school regular-season games, high school tournament games, college games and all-star events such as the Indiana-Kentucky All-Star series.
Twice a winner of the Marv Bates Award as Sportscaster of the Year from the Indiana Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association, in 2015 and again in 2020, Rakestraw also was recognized as the National Sports Media Association’s Indiana Sportscaster of the Year for 2023.
Rakestraw and his wife, Amy, have been happily married for more than 25 years. Together, they raise their daughter, Mia, and son, Jack, in the Broad Ripple area.
District 3: Mark Brochin, WWBL Radio, Washington
Mark Brochin is a retired sportscaster from southwest Indiana, working in the field from 1971 to 2021. He moved to Washington in 1982, covering games and doing local sports updates for 39 years. He worked mainly for The Original Company, which owned 12 radio stations in Indiana and Illinois and was the state’s largest radio group to carry high school sports. His primary duties were with WWBL “The Bullet,” where he produced and delivered 10 sportscasts each day on three Original Company stations.
Throughout his career he was a play-by-play announcer for more than 2,000 contests, including boys’ basketball, girls’ basketball, football, baseball, softball, wrestling and swimming. Brochin often was a one-man crew, keeping his own statistics while calling the games and conducting interviews. He also provided color commentary for an additional 500 contests and was a part of boys’ basketball and girls’ basketball State Finals broadcasts in 26 different years. He also did spot reporting for golf, cross country, volleyball and tennis and wrote a weekly sports column for the Tri County News for several years.
In addition, Brochin was an IHSAA licensed official in basketball and recently was a starter for an IHSAA golf regional held at Country Oaks Golf Course in Montgomery, Ind.
Brochin was a recipient of the IHSAA Distinguished Media Service Award in 2011-12. He counts that as one of the greatest professional honors he has received.
A 1974 graduate of Connersville High School and a 1978 graduate of Indiana University with a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications, Brochin started in broadcasting in 1971 while a sophomore at Connersville and was part of the radio crew that called the Spartans’ 1972 IHSAA boys’ basketball state championship. During his last two years in high school, he was on the news and sports broadcast crew for Connersville Cable TV, which was the first agreement in the nation between a high school and a cable partner. He later announced games for radio stations in Rushville, Columbus, Vincennes, Petersburg, Linton and Evansville. In addition, he broadcast games in Illinois, Missouri and Oklahoma, but the majority of his career has been in Daviess County, Indiana.
In retirement, he volunteers at Daviess Community Hospital, Eastgate Manor Nursing and Rehab Center, Daviess County Friends For Animals and Our Lady of Hope Catholic Church. He also works part time at Country Oaks Golf Course, bowls in two leagues and continues to golf whenever possible. He is entering his 43rd consecutive season as a member of the Washington Men's Golf League.
Brochin and his wife, Patricia, are parents of two adult children, Andrew and Elizabeth, each a multi-sport athlete at Washington Catholic High School. Their first grandchild is due this summer.
