University of Mary Athletics

Roger Higgins has always had sports in his blood. Fresh out of high school, Roger signed with the Boston Red Sox and pitched for a month and a half for a minor league club in Roanoke, Virginia. World War II intervened, but following two years in the U.S. Army, Roger began a nine year stint in organized baseball. He finished his professional career in 1957, serving as pitcher, pitching coach, and assistant manager in Las Vegas, Nevada. As an 11 year veteran of professional baseball, Roger came to Bismarck as a pitcher for the Bismarck Barons. Shortly after his arrival in Bismarck he began the first of his 40 years of sports broadcasting. Roger began his broadcasting career with KBOM radio, where he took a sales job in 1956 between baseball seasons. During the fall and winter seasons he helped KBOM’s sports director with play-by-play announcing. In the fall of 1957, Roger accepted a position with Bismarck’s newest television station, KXMB Channel 12, as a sports director. In 1959, Roger moved to the Meyer Broadcasting Company and KFYR Television. By 1961, he took over as the station’s play-by-play broadcaster and in 1964, the Meyer Broadcasting Company named him sports director for both television and radio. Roger worked with television and radio until 1978, where he concentrated only on TV sports broadcasting. Since his retirement in 1989, Roger has been the “Voice of the Marauders” for KLXX radio in Bismarck.

The October 4, 1997 University of Mary football game will mark the 325th Marauder broadcast Roger has done since his semi-retirement in 1989. And, according to Roger, if he went back to the coaching days of Fritz Fell and Al Bortke at U-Mary, the number would be pushing the 400 mark.