The Unexpected Careers of Francisco X. Rivera and Nano Cortés

It's not often that video games play a part in the beginning of a groundbreaking career path, but for Francisco X. Rivera and Nano Cortés, it absolutely was.
Rivera and Cortés make up the LA Kings' new
Spanish radio broadcast team that will call 10 games this season.
The partnership with ESPN Deportes marks the first time that Kings games will be broadcasted on Spanish radio since the 1997-98 season.

Not strangers to each other or the game of hockey, Rivera and Cortés are both thrilled for the opportunity to bring hockey into the Los Angeles-area Latin community via the airwaves.
Hailing from areas where winter sports are skeletal at best, Rivera from Mexico City and Cortés from Bogotá, the two played the same Nintendo game, where they got their first taste of calling hockey plays as children. Rivera knew that at a young age he wanted to be either an athlete or a broadcaster, and Cortés, whose father was a broadcaster, knew that was his life's path.
Both Rivera and Cortés were invited by family members in California to stay with them so that they could attend school - Rivera is a graduate of Long Beach State University and Cortés of California State University at Northridge.

While Spanish is their native language, each overcame huge obstacles to perfect their English en route to their broadcasting careers. An attendee of bilingual school in Mexico City, Rivera credits his father for his superb grasp on the English language.
"My dad made a huge effort to make sure I had good opportunities and I only went to good schools in Mexico," says Rivera. "What's funny about that is I crossed over into English TV in 2013 working for Fox, I was actually the first Mexican-born broadcaster on Fox Network and that makes me very proud, but at the same time I knew I needed to work really hard to compete with everyone here because I'm in Los Angeles, I'm in Hollywood. If I really want to be one of the best guys out there I need to compete a lot, so it was sort of like learning how to walk again."
Rivera worked with coaches to correct his bad English habits, a challenge that he admits led to great opportunities, including this one with the Kings over the summer. With a Canadian nephew just a few years away from the NHL and his experience with calling Olympic hockey, Rivera was eager for a chance at the Kings play-by-play job.
He put together a demo reel using his Los Angeles Football Club broadcast partner, and used Alec Martinez's Cup-winning goal from 2014 as one of his calls. After a month of nervous waiting, wondering if he'd get the job, the good news finally came.

Even before he was officially offered the job, Rivera worked on putting together his own preparation guides with nomenclature, trying to figure out which hockey terms could be translated into Spanish and which couldn't. After his hiring was official, he sat in front of the television and called all the Kings pre-season games from his living room.
He has since been able to watch Kings radio play-by-play announcer, Nick Nickson, and is impressed with Nickson's ability to call an entire game off a sheet of paper, compared to the plethora of gadgets that Rivera admits to needing.
Cortés' preparation habits came straight from his father, whom he would shadow at work whenever he could, and was always well-prepared with notes and research about any game he was calling.

"When I started calling my own games I followed those same steps," Cortés explains. "I wanted to be and always strived to be as prepared as I possibly can, and to really feel that nobody would outprepare me."
While studying English and journalism in college, Cortés was able to get a job at DirecTV Sports, where his dad worked. He called his first soccer game with his father in 2007, and a few games later partnered up with Rivera for the first time. As part of the DirecTV Sports team, Cortés was sent to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010 and again in Sochi in 2014. It was here that he gained valuable experience calling winter sports like hockey, curling, and speedskating.
Eleven years after they called their first game together, Rivera and Cortés are back together, this time helping the Kings to spread a love of hockey to parts of the community that may have, in the past, been a little harder to reach.
"The Kings are trying to reach out to this community and this audience to get them involved in this game that for many of them is strange and maybe not something that they grew up with because we really didn't," articulates Cortés, who got his first taste of hockey when he moved to the States in 1998.
"Most of us did not have access to snow and ice and things like that. But I feel like the game is very unique, and as I like to call it, it has many different flavors of different sports. To me, hockey is the fastest game that I've ever called, and because of the different flavors and aspects of the game it makes it very unique and very appealing, and my intention is to bring that excitement to our audience, to really get them to understand that this game is so unique, that being a part of a Kings game is like nothing else that they've ever experienced."

The first of the 10 Spanish broadcast games came on November 1st when the Kings hosted the Philadelphia Flyers, which was also the Kings' Dia de Los Muertos theme night, another nod to the Latin heritage within the community.
"There is a very secret weapon that we have. Latinos are very interested in sports, and then there are a lot of Latinos interested in hockey - a lot of first and second-generation people who might not speak the language well, but they understand it," shares Rivera, who applauds the Kings effort to put on hockey camps in his hometown of Mexico City two weeks ago. "I think it's amazing to start from the roots, from the foundations, and try to get people involved and engaged, and I think we have the power the make it happen."
One of the common themes that both Rivera and Cortés have noticed about the Kings organization and the game of hockey is the feeling of family. Fernando Gonzalez was one of the original Spanish radio broadcasters when the Kings launched the broadcasts in 1997-98, and he told Cortés that the Kings welcomed him into the family and invited him as a guest to opening night that season. Cortés verified that he had that exact e-mail, saying "welcome to the family."
"That's really what I want to nurture and what I really want to have people understand: this is a team but this is a family. The fans are so loyal, the fans are going to be with you 100 percent, and that is the type of family environment that Latinos really value," Rivera emphasizes. "I can tell you, being born and raised in Mexico City, that's just the way we are, we value family more than anything."

Many people were interested to see how Rivera would call
his first Kings goal,
and whether or not it would be similar to his soccer goal call, including Kings goaltender Peter Budaj. Rivera decided that the call had to be that iconic Spanish-style soccer goal call, and when the time came, the moment delivered. Rivera admits that the call was so highly anticipated and so unexpected that when the goal came, he was losing his breath and overwhelmed.

If this is a sign of things to come for Rivera, Cortés, and their new Kings broadcasts, es muy bueno.