Pat Olson retires as the ‘GOAT’ of Half Moon Bay High School broadcasting department

“I thought that was kind of cool,” Olson said. “I thought: ‘What a way to cap it for my career.’”

Olson, 66, still figures to have plenty of games left to announce. He will continue to serve as the voice of six different teams at USF, and plans to work more games than ever in 2026-27 as he will no longer have to schedule around his teaching job at Half Moon Bay.

On the Coastside, though, Olson will leave behind a high school broadcasting curriculum he invented since being hired to teach social studies midway through the 2022-23 school year in March 2023.

“Losing Pat is just huge because he just covers so many different events on campus,” HMB baseball manager Brian Anderson said. “He’s just so into sports and especially keeping us up on what’s going on in the West Coast Conference. ... So, he does a great job communicating with our athletes in the classroom too, making sure they’re staying on top of everything.”

Half Moon Bay math and yearbook teacher Christina Baker will take over the broadcasting program, after being mentored by Olson since returning for her second teaching stint at HMB in 2017. She took her first teaching position at HMB in 2004 before moving to Notre Dame-Belmont, where she supervised Tiger TV, the on-campus YouTube channel.

“He mentored me and he’s been a great mentor,” Baker said. “And I’ll do my best to carry on what he’s started. ... For what he does, he is the GOAT. So, you can’t replace that.”

Before becoming a teacher, Olson was a longtime on-air personality for radio station KNBR. A string of layoffs by KNBR left him unemployed. Instead of immediately diving back into the job market, he attended Skyline College, where he ran cross country with Half Moon Bay math teacher Jennifer Walton, who recommended he pursue teaching. It made sense for Olson, who comes from a family of teachers; his father was a middle school English teacher, and his mother taught kindergarten and first grade.

While he received other job offers in professional media, he decided to focus on the career change toward education.

“I turned them down and I pursued teaching,” Olson said. “I kind of switched it up. I can still do USF games. ... So, I embraced a career change and got my credential.”

Hired by the Cabrillo Unified School District on an emergency permit during teacher shortages in the early 2000s, Olson was concurrently earning his teaching credential from San Francisco State. He graduated in 2004, then earned his his master’s degree in education at age 40.

When Olson arrived on the HMB campus, he was assigned to a classroom in the now defunct freshman wing. It wasn’t long before he moved into the K building across campus, then a newly constructed two-story academic wing. With arts classes held on the second floor of the K building, Olson not only parlayed his academic classroom from several periods of social studies into a separate period for beginning broadcasting class. Next door, he began assembling a broadcasting lab where he would teach an advanced broadcasting class.

At first, Olson was limited to the mostly analog technology of the day. On of his first on-campus ventures was recording Half Moon Bay football games and taking the VHS tapes to local Mid-Coast Television to have the games rebroadcast during the week. But as worldwide media changed in a hurry, Olson updated the technology to roll with the digital world.

“It’s amazing the knowledge that he passes on to the kids,” HMB English teacher John Carey said. “These kids are producing some really incredible stuff under Pat’s tutelage.”

During the 2025-26 school year, Olson started his day teaching junior social studies. While social studies and broadcasting share the common bond of storytelling, Olson brought an added dynamic to his classes as being revered by students for his golden voice.

“You can hear the sports talk in his voice when he’s talking about U.S. history,” HMB junior baseball standout Riley Jackson said. “It was a great class first thing in the morning. ... That’s literally how it felt, like you’re listening to a sports game, and they’re talking about history.”

When the HMB baseball team qualified for the Central Coast Section playoffs, Olson volunteered to serve as the play-by-play announcer for livestreams provided by NFHS Network. After serendipity had followed Olson throughout his teaching career, the Cougars’ postseason run followed suit as Anderson’s squad went on the capture the CCS Division V championship, its first section crown since 1994. Then the team really got cooking the CIF Nor Cal Division IV tournament, recording three straight shutouts to win the title by a cumulative score of 15-0.

On the day of HMB’s 10-0 semifinal home win over West Valley-Cottonwood, Olson — no stranger to moonlighting — pulled double duty by also filming HMB’s graduation ceremony held on the football field later that afternoon.

This has been the foundation of Olson’s media curriculum at HMB, where he has overseen a large cast of on-air personalities, and fostered plenty of behind-the-scenes students as well, for a busy schedule that includes the Cabrillo Unified School District YouTube channel, Olson’s invention, that covers an array of on-campus events at Half Moon Bay High and Cunha Intermediate, as well as the HMBHS Campus TV News, which streams two to three episodes per week.

“I wore a lot of hats at the high school,” Olson said.

Olson cited a recent health scare as a major factor in his decision to retire.

In addition to his many hats, Olson leaves some big shoes to fill as well.

“They are immensely huge shoes to fill,” Anderson said.