Depending on the time of year, you may find Mike Skvara broadcasting a football game for Reitz Memorial High School. He could be crunching numbers as a statistician for the same program. Or, maybe he is herding coaches to press conferences and post-game ceremonies as a media coordinator for the Indiana High School Athletic Association.
Skvara’s sports-beating servant’s heart is no secret. In November, IHSAA honored him with the Distinguished Media Service Award for District 3.
Although touched, Skvara shrugs off praise. “I would rather work behind the scenes, but if I need to take a leadership role, I will. I feel very comfortable doing both.”
The Whiting, Indiana, native credits his parents with instilling in him a desire to serve. Church — he’s a longtime member of Holy Rosary Catholic Church — and sports have received much of his community efforts. He has coached football and baseball, covered games as a freelance sportswriter for print publications, and done internet streaming broadcasts for IndianaSRN and the IHSAA Champions Network, among others.
In fact, sports bonded him with two women who changed his life. Skvara met his first wife Sue when both were teachers in Lowell, Indiana, in the 1970s. After the couple moved to Evansville in 1988, Sue excelled as a physical education teacher at Holy Rosary Catholic School before her death in 1997. He met his second wife, Ann, while coaching her son on the Holy Rosary grade school football team. He and Ann, a nurse and nursing professor at Ivy Tech Community College, married in 2003.
“After faith and family, there are five things I have a passion for: sports, sales, media, education, and community involvement,” he says.
In 2012, Skvara and renowned football coach Ted Huber started the Southern Indiana Chapter of the National Football Foundation. He earned an NFF Chapter Leadership Award in 2019.
While Skvara enjoys most sports, football is his favorite. But no matter the sports or community project, “Whatever I’m doing, I enjoy the most,” he says. “I’ve developed relationships because of all this, and they’re all intertwined. But there’s one common thing: Sports.”
