How Donal Ware built the nation’s hub for HBCU sports media coverage

Every week for the last 20 years, Donal Ware follows the same regimented schedule when he steps into his at-home studio in Fuquay-Varina.

Monday is for planning out his radio show BOXTOROW’s content. Tuesday and Wednesday are for gathering sponsors and pitching to radio affiliates to keep the broadcast alive. Even after two decades, the fight for survival never ends.

But Ware doesn’t mind. Thursday through Saturday, he gets to go live on the air and follow through on the vision he set out to accomplish 20 years ago: shining a spotlight on athletics at historically Black colleges and universities. That’s what makes all the work worth it, even as the cycle restarts again by Monday.

“I believe when you start something, you keep it going, if you can,” he said. “And there’s no reason why we can’t keep it going.”

On Aug. 20, BOXTOROW celebrated its platinum anniversary at North Hills to commemorated the show’s first radio broadcast on Aug. 20, 2005, out of Baltimore. Short for “from the press box to press row,” BOXTOROW has evolved from radio shows on SiriusXM to a media enterprise at the heart of HBCU sports coverage. Ware analyzes games. He platforms HBCU athletes and coaches. He sheds light on professional athletes’ HBCU roots.

“That’s really part of his legacy,” said Kyle Serba, who worked in athletic communications at North Carolina Central for over 29 years before becoming Duke men’s basketball’s communications director. “When he first started BOXTOROW, there was not a whole lot of media coverage with HBCU sports. That’s kind of a trendy thing to do nowadays because of all the intriguing storylines, but 20 years ago, there were very few media entities that were dedicated to covering HBCU sports.”

Bitten by radio bug

Radio drew Ware in from a young age. He graduated from Maryland’s largest HBCU, Morgan State, with the intention of becoming a play-by-play commentator, but his first job offer in sports was as North Carolina A&T’s SID instead.

Still, he couldn’t shake the radio bug. Whenever NC A&T’s regular broadcaster was unavailable, Ware stepped in to commentate.

Even when he moved on to work in N.C. State football’s media relations office in 2001 and in Shaw University’s sports information department in 2002, he never stopped envisioning a future in radio.

Before he left Shaw in 2005, Ware told Marcus Clarke, formerly Shaw’s athletic director, about his idea of starting a radio show to cover HBCU sports. The love Ware had for HBCU athletics coupled with his desire to address the lack of coverage had him thinking about fixing it on his own.

A skeptical Clarke asked, “You gonna make a living doing this?”

Ware’s answer: “This is what I want to do.”

“Donal just never found a way to take no for an answer in terms of whatever he had to encounter — whether it was getting his show picked up on SiriusXM, whether it was going international — he just always found a way to make sure you may tell no now, but no was not a final answer for him,” Clarke said.

Early struggles, then success

It wasn’t easy. In the first year, Ware self-funded the show’s air time until he could secure advertising to pay for the costs. But about four months after the first broadcast, BOXTOROW ran out of money. It made him question whether it was worth continuing.

Ware took on a couple of outside jobs. The St. Augustine University’s student radio station hosted the show until he rebuilt affiliates. Slowly, Ware earned air time in Atlanta, Greensboro and New York City.

After 2007, he never questioned his ability to continue again.

The show now airs in 12 of the country’s top-50 radio markets with international affiliates in the Bahamas and British Virgin Islands. Over the last 20 years, Serena Williams, Kevin Durant, Simone Biles, Snoop Dogg and other celebrities have sat down for interviews with BOXTOROW. No matter who he talks to, Ware always connects the conversation to HBCUs.

And Ware lives out his dreams of a career in radio everyday, not only at BOXTOROW, but as a talk show host for ESPN Radio and as the play-by-play radio voice for NC A&T football.

“When I would say I’m not doing this anymore, something would happen,” Ware said, “whether it was a great interview or maybe a sponsor said they will come on, whatever it was, allowed me to keep going.”

Like his weekly prep, so much work went into Wednesday’s celebration, which featured a live BOXTOROW show and a performance from the Shaw University Platinum Sound Marching Band.

While the event was intended to celebrate the anniversary, Ware also hoped to entertain and bring more listeners to BOXTOROW — because that part of the job never ends.

But later in the week, he’ll sit down in his chair in the home studio, a wall of photos behind him highlighting his family and the people BOXTOROW brought into his life. He says his wife, Kimberly, is the coolest person on the photo board. He couldn’t do this without her.

All of the images mark BOXTOROW’s — and Ware’s — journey over the last 20 years. They’ll be right behind him as he slips his earbuds in and goes on the air.

This story was originally published August 20, 2025 at 6:00 AM.