Gente de NAHJ: Alex Del Barrio’s journey from small-town Texas boy to Harlem Globetrotters announcer
As a kid, Alex Del Barrio dreamed of working for the WWE.
But he never imagined someone like him — a Latino from the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas — would ever achieve something that felt so big.
Del Barrio was born and raised in Mission, Texas, and was the youngest of three siblings. When he was in sixth grade, he discovered the NBA, watching the Chicago Bulls win their first three championships and attending Houston Rockets games. It was then that his passion for sports and entertainment was born.
When he grew up, he attended Boston University to start his college career and later the University of Texas-Pan American, where he received a bachelors degree in broadcast journalism. After taking on many roles post-graduation, he became a public address announcer for the Harlem Globetrotters, with whom he traveled to 26 countries in an 18 month span. A few years later, he would achieve his childhood dream by working for the WWE as a host and ring announcer.
“I knew I wanted to be able to tell stories with my voice one way or another,” he said. “If you would’ve told 11-year old me watching ‘King of the Ring 1993’…that one day I’d be holding a microphone backstage at Wrestlemania, I’d think it was crazy.”
Today, Barrio is the sports director for KRGV News in the Valley and a play-by-play announcer for CBS Sports. He credits a conference of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists for giving him the chance to network and find career opportunities.
“Doing that was the best thing that ever happened to me because I met the important people I needed to meet in order to put myself on the right trajectory,” he said.
Marc Ray is a senior at the University of Houston, where he studies broadcast journalism. As an intern for Houston Public Media he covered a range of issues, including sports features and election stories. He covered the 2020 protests against racial injustice in Houston for El Gato Media network and is completing a video internship for AARP. Reach him at mray [at] theventureonline [dot] com and on Twitter @marcraysports.
