Bob Nagle is celebrating 43 years of broadcasting in the South Bend area, which includes a rich history of high school and Notre Dame highlights few could hope to match.

Nagle, born into an Irish immigrant family in Ottawa, Ill., grew up like many around the country: listening to Notre Dame football and the voices of Al Webster and Van Patrick. “We’d listen to the first half and then go out and recreate Daryle Lamonica and Monty Stickles. You all wanted to be Notre Dame; we all wanted to be star players,” Bob said. “Growing up, your dream was to see Notre Dame stadium, not on game day, just see it before you died.”

Nagle’s opportunity came when his father was named superintendent of the Elkhart Housing Authority and the family moved to Mishawaka. “You could get on the bus for 25 cents and be out at campus in about a half hour. My brother and I were out there every day,” he recalled.

Today, Bob is best known as the voice of Notre Dame women’s basketball. But his wide-encompassing radio and television broadcast career, which began at WBST in South Bend in 1977, includes covering Indiana state high school football and basketball for the IHSAA Network and for LeSea Broadcasting.

His tenure at WSBT included notables such as calling Plymouth High School’s 1982 basketball championship and Penn High School’s first football title in 1983. Nagle’s coverage of Notre Dame football has included televising the spring game to South Bend and Chicago and freelance post-game coverage for national networks. His work also includes coverage of Notre Dame baseball.

But perhaps the most memorable of all the calls came April 1, 2018, when after more than 20 years of covering Notre Dame women’s basketball, Bob was able to announce the words he longed to say for years: “Notre Dame is national champion!”

Bob has received an honorary monogram from the University of Notre Dame. Other awards include the Lindsay Nelson Broadcaster of the Year from the All-America Football Foundation, and Broadcaster of the Year from the Indiana Athletic Directors Association. Bob was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame in 2010. He was inducted into the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame in 2016.

Bob is currently the sports marketing director at Family Broadcasting Corp. and WHME TV. Bob and his wife Mary Carol have been married for 37 years and have three children, Bob, Joe, and Mary Catherine Shafer.