WESH names Daren Stoltzfus as the new sports director
An award-winning broadcaster from Charleston, S.C., will be the new sports director at WESH-Channel 2, the NBC affiliate announced Tuesday.
Daren Stoltzfus will join WESH from ABC News 4, where he covered Clemson, the University of South Carolina and three Division 1 schools in Charleston. He also reported on college football playoff games and national championships in NCAA basketball and baseball.
“We are excited to have Daren lead our sports coverage,” Kirsten Wolff, WESH news director, said in a statement. “He’s been in this business for a decade, covering athletes, teams and the fans who love them. He approaches the job on two fronts — delivering key coverage on the TV side and interacting on the digital side 24⁄7.”
In May, sports anchor Pat Clarke revealed that he was out at WESH, where he has worked since 2003. Clarke told the Sentinel that he had learned several weeks earlier that he was being replaced. Clarke has been in the Orlando market since 1986, when he started at WFTV-Channel 9. He was with the ABC affiliate through 1998.
Speculation has swirled in the TV industry that David Pingalore, formerly of WKMG-Channel 6, might return to Orlando for the WESH job.
But Stoltzfus is WESH’s choice. He noted that he will join WESH “during the greatest time of year: football season.”
He was named the TV Sportscaster of the Year in 2015, 2016 and 2018 by the Radio Television Digital News Association of the Carolinas. That group also selected him sports reporter of the year in 2015.
In 2016, he was chosen the South Carolina Broadcasters Association’s Sportscaster of the Year.
“WESH 2 has an incredible reputation in local news, and it is an honor to be part of their team,” Stoltzfus said in a release. “Central Florida is stocked with so many incredible stories and a wide variety of sporting events at every level. It is a sportscaster’s dream.”
He has a bachelor of science degree in journalism and electronic media from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.