MORGANTOWN — Sometimes a hire brings unexpected bonuses, and so it has been with Oliver Luck’s hire of Randy Mazey to build a competitive Big 12 baseball team at West Virginia University. Mazey brought his bag of tricks from TCU and an extra added attraction in his wife, Amanda Mazey, one who introduces herself on Twitter this way:

Mom, TV host/sports reporter, athlete, adventurer & wife of the head coach of West Virginia U baseball team.

Mazey is all that and more, an attractive, vivacious blonde who seemingly was born to wind up in West Virginia.

Consider a couple of her tweets in recent days:

• “Props to my dad for chasing down the fox who stole my hiking boot yesterday while I was fishing in the lake.”

• “I don’t get to fish that often, but when I do, I catch 16-inch cutthroat Trout. Fish well my friends.”

• “4 wheeling in the Wyoming mountains. Gonna kayak down the Snake River today then catch some trout!”

All that and she knows a draw play from a screen pass, a hit-and-run from a run-and-hit play and presents it in an intelligent, entertaining fashion on television ... and yes, she’s hoping to land a spot doing TV work for whomever lands the rights to WVU’s broadcasting or do video work for the school.

“I’m trying to work some things right now,” she admitted. “I love the business and I love sports.”

Born in Columbus, Ohio, she moved to North Carolina in the seventh grade and attended East Carolina. While there she met Mazey, who was the baseball coach as she attained a communications degree in 1997.

She landed a job with the NBC affiliate there as a producer, eight months later was the weekend morning anchor and then just worked her way into the weekend sports anchor job.

“Randy had the best coverage of any coach in America,” she admitted.

Twice she wound up in Mountaineer Field to see Steve Logan bring his East Carolina Pirates to WVU, once as a fan, the other time professionally, being on hand for the 1996 game in which Logan scored late and opted to go for two points on the game’s final play rather than risk overtime, failing to convert.

When the couple moved to Fort Worth for the TCU job, she did not go back into local sports reporting as she was pregnant with her first of two children.

“I started working with the Mountain Network as basically their TCU sports reporter. Then I started doing things with TCU. I’d emcee events for them, do promotions that were on the scoreboard. I was kind of just a freelance talking head. Now I host a lifestyle and entertainment show,” she said.

But a lot of women are aspiring to be Erin Andrews and follow that path in their life. It is when Amanda Mazey gets off the beaten path that she becomes something of an intriguing character, for she seems to have been born for the outdoors.

She is so much of an outdoorsman that she was engaged in Montana while backpacking.

“I had no idea that was coming,” she admitted. “Here I was, engaged for three days and I couldn’t even tell anybody because we were back in the woods. The ring was too big, so I took fishing line and wrapped it around the ring so I could put it on my finger.”

There was no cruise or swanky resort hotel for the honeymoon, either.

“Randy and I actually spent our honeymoon backpacking in Alaska for two weeks. He’s very outdoorsy, and I would trade in the high heels for hiking boots anytime,” she said.

While she doesn’t hunt, anything else goes for her in the outdoors

“Probably one of our favorite things to do is go on those backpack hikes where you take everything you need and go into the woods for a week. There’s no technology, just eating what you packed and living off the land. We love that,” she said.

That led to the Alaskan honeymoon.

“It wasn’t exactly romantic, but it was adventurous,” she said, leading her to the most adventurous part of the journey.

“One of the coolest things we ever did was take a four-day excursion where they fly you in and drop you off. They leave you. If you break an ankle or fall off a cliff, you have no way to get in touch with anybody. There’s nothing.

“We didn’t see another human being for four days. They just say, ‘We’ll be back in four days at 2 o’clock. You be here.’”

And they were there when the guides returned.

“There were glaciers around. We’d take hikes each day, about 10 miles and just kind of explore. Talk about starting out your life; you’re living in a tent and there’s no other human in sight. You find out real quick if you like each other or not,” she said.

Now she’s looking forward to exploring West Virginia.

She’ll hit the rivers and streams for fly fishing and is already gearing up for winter.

“The prospect of skiing is great. I want to start my kids because I did it when I was young,” she said.

She doesn’t ask much, really. A rod and reel, a mountain path and a sunset.

“I caught a really nice one in Wyoming last week, a cutthroat trout of about 16 or 17 inches. I’ll take that. Every day I fished I caught something, and for me, if I can catch just one a day I’m all right with it.

“I love photography and I love nature. I like to see the beauty in sunsets,” she said.

Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com. Follow on Twitter @bhertzel.