Catching up with Noah Simon: Former Bureau Valley player chasing broadcasting career

Noah Simon found a home at Bureau Valley High School in the cornfields of Manlius, Ill. over the pond from his native Germany in the fall of 2018.

A foreign exchange student, Simon also found a home for his love of basketball, proving to be a key member of the Storm’s 2018-19 Elite Eight squad, scoring 12 points (8 in the second half) with six rebounds in the Storm’s season-ending 60-45 loss to Chicago Corliss in the DeKalb Supersectional.

Simon, 23, found he could come home again, suiting up for the inaugural BV-Princeton booster clubs' alumni game last December, getting the old band together again with teammates Kale Barnett, Tyler Gustafson, Noah Johnson and Corbin Endress.

“I had a blast connecting with old friends,” Simon said, “We like to make sure we still got it once in awhile. When I’m home I usually play basketball with Ty and Kale. Over break, we’d go to Annawan on Sundays to play with a bunch of Annawan kids. It’s fun. Make sure we can still play a little bit.”

Simon played basketball in his homeland before coming to BV, but rather on town teams as there is no high school basketball in Germany, typically playing against men and at different positions than he was asked to for the Storm.

“It was definitely a learning curve. It was such a different style of basketball,” he said. “I feel like you really can’t know until you’re put in the position. It was pretty seamless for me to fit in making sure I knew what my role was on the team. Understanding what I needed to do. As the season progressed, that definitely got a lot easier.”

He was supposed to ease into his role coming off the bench, but found himself thrust into the starting lineup when teammate Ben Shipp sprained his ankle during warmups of the first game of the season at the Wethersfield Thanksgiving tournament.

“I was like I’m just going to go out there, see how it is and try to do my best. It came natural for me to do my job, fill my role,” he said. “A little different from what I’m used to at home. They asked me to play a lot of 4 and 5 here. I played the 2 and 3 at home because we don’t have high school teams and its mixed with older people and from when I was 14 and 15 (years old), I was playing with adults and a lot of people much bigger than me and I didn’t have to play the 4 and 5.

“The coaches really helped me with the transition and I was comfortable with what I was doing and if I had any questions they were all ears and open to help.”

The 2018-19 Storm brought back a strong cast of players from a 25-5 sectional finalist the year before. While the regular season didn’t go like they would have wanted at 16-10 heading into the postseason, the talent was there.

The Storm took off in the postseason, defeating St. Bede (64-41) and Hall (63-60) for the regional championship and then Orion (57-50) and a powerful Newman team (56-49) at the Riverdale Sectional.

Simon says he couldn‘t haven’t asked for a better experience at Bureau Valley. While he considered to come back for a second year at BV or at neighboring school, he elected to return home to complete his schooling.

Then COVID hit in 2020 and Simon had to delay his return to the States to attend college. He enrolled at IVCC for the fall of 2021 and while he would have liked to play basketball, he was unable to because of a foot injury. Instead he wound up writing about the Eagles for the IVCC student newspaper, the Leader.

“With the newspaper, I thought it was still a nice way for be to still be around with the basketball team. And then with Ty (Gustafson) being on the team, it made it fun covering them,” Simon said.

He transferred to ISU and began working with the athletics department and event planning. Last fall, he joined the student radio station, WZND, as a sports and news intern, which offers the opportunities to broadcast the basketball games. He broadcasted the Redbirds’ last football game and has called two women’s basketball games and two men’s basketball games this season as well as continuing to write sports.

“That’s something I want to do in the future and what I’ve been enjoying the most the last year,” Simon said.

Simon got his first taste of broadcasting following his dad’s career. Patrick Simon, who made an overnight flight from Germany to watch his son play in the DeKalb Supersectional for the Storm, is a well known broadcaster in the European racing circuits and a former racing star.

“I’ve been listening to my father for years. I remember when I was young, I’d watch them throughout the day and then he came back I would recite him his whole broadcast, everything he said,” said Simon, who also helped work on his dad’s cars when he raced.

In the summer of 2018, two months before Simon came to Bureau Valley, his dad surprised him by inviting him to sit in with him to broadcast some races even though they were not going to be featured on TV.

“He just asked me if I wanted to sit in with him and broadcast the race with him. I said, ‘Are you sure?’ Everybody in the TV truck was in favor of it, and said, ‘Yeah, we’ll stay. We’ll facilitate it like a regular race,’” Simon said.

“I was a little nervous. I didn’t know If I wanted to do this. It was a great time. Racing for me is not the priority. I’m more of a football, basketball guy, but it was still fascinating to see how it all works and actually do it myself. It was just a fun time. And finally getting to do it the first time was definitely kind of got me going in that direction for sure.”

An ISU senior, Simon has applied to grad school at ISU and for some grad assistant positions. He would like to make a career out of sports broadcasting, just like his dad.

“Basketball is my favorite sport, so that would probably be my main goal, but I’m obviously open to doing other sports, too,” he said. “I like watching football and soccer, even racing, I would be open to a lot of things. I definitely want to stay in broadcasting.”

Kevin Hieronymus has been the BCR Sports Editor since 1986. Contact him at khieronymus@bcrnews.com