At 6 a.m. on Tuesday, March 17, a sleepy station manager crawled into the KWAR studio to hop on air and kick off their largest annual event: an 89.9-hour marathon with live DJs and prizes every hour.

KWAR, the Wartburg College radio station, hosts this marathon every year with the help of its staff members, volunteer DJs and faculty. The event, which continued until midnight on Friday, March 20, completed full-circle experiences for several participants, including its own station manager, Chris Guerrero.

Guerrero, who first became involved with KWAR and marathon during his freshman year, was just a curious student who committed to being a volunteer DJ. Now, as a senior that has served on KWAR’s staff for the past three years, it was evident he was the best fit for taking the lead on planning and kicking off his final marathon experience.

Marathon ultimately provides KWAR with a huge opportunity to expand their outreach to the surrounding Waverly community and increase campus engagement.

“It’s a way for us to just kind of be a part of campus for a significant amount of time,” Guerrero says. “It brings in a lot of people, it has people calling to the station, it gets us to engage with the whole Wartburg community, and outside of that, the Waverly community.”

Since marathon expects a large amount of campus and community interaction, it requires months of arrangement to ensure all the moving parts work in synchronization.

Step one in planning? Determine the theme.

While choosing the theme for the 89.9-hour marathon, Guerrero shares that one must consider a variety of factors: avoid repeating a theme from the past, make it possible to stretch creative limits, cater to your audience and offer a new angle.

For his final year at Wartburg, instead of focusing on music everyone already knows and loves, Guerrero wanted a theme that represented every corner of the Wartburg and Waverly communities and exposed these communities to new music. With that in mind, ‘Around The World’ was born.

“Warburg is such a diverse campus, and we have people from literally all over the world. We wanted to play into that,” Guerrero states. “We wanted to be able to show the diversity that the station has, but also more of what the world has in music.”

As the 89.9 hours ran its course, marathon DJs covered music from five continents and 30 different countries. Behind the microphone for 31 hours of the event was senior Cameron Stoner.

Stoner is a business administration major who was introduced to the radio station during his sophomore year audio production class. Though his passion for being on-air was unexpected and his major did not necessarily align, he chose to continue volunteering as a full-time DJ for the station.

He has played a key role in the execution of the 89.9-hour marathon for the past three years by claiming several ‘graveyard shifts’ in the latest hours of the night and earliest hours of the morning. Why does he do it? Because everyone else is intimidated by it.

“I genuinely do think that he is one of the people who cares the most about the station, despite the fact that he’s not on staff and he’s not being paid for it,” Guerrero says. “Him taking those shifts just shows how much he cares… I don’t think the marathon would have gone as well as it did if he wasn’t part of it.”

Though Stoner never had a major role in the planning of the marathon, he appreciates the effort his peers put into deciding the theme and organizing the event.

“[The theme] kind of gives me that challenge of trying to find something to play… I had to really search and find stuff that fit that region’s criteria, but most of the time I played the top charts of that area,” Stoner explains. “You’re hearing completely different music from each hour and it was such a cool thing to see happen in real time.”

With the theme set, the next steps contained the nitty gritty details: determine your brand and plan of attack.

To accommodate Guerrero’s hopes of representing as many countries as possible, there had to be a system. For the duration of the marathon, each six-hour timeframe was dedicated to playing the top 40 songs from one specific region of the world. A few featured countries included Australia, Italy, Malaysia, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Argentina and Puerto Rico.

The rest of the KWAR staff contributed to planning digital signage and social media engagement to advertise the marathon in the weeks leading up to the event. To raise excitement, an annual station tradition is to countdown to the theme reveal and the 6 a.m. start of marathon.

The most important step in preparation is to gather the prizes from community partners that will be offered during every hour of marathon. From sizable gift cards to swag bag packages, local businesses provide the rewards that create the loud buzz around Wartburg and Waverly.

In recent years, these prizes have become the most anticipated feature of the 89.9-hour marathon. In total, KWAR prepared 90 prizes to hand out to callers.

“The prizes this year were great, and people missed out,” Stoner says. “Seeing how everyone in Waverly is helping out with this marathon is just awesome to see.”

Much help is required from the journalism and communication department to execute the entire 89.9-hour marathon. To ensure a live DJ is in the studio every hour of the day, the entire team of KWAR staff, volunteer DJs and faculty members chip in.

Guerrero specifically notes the importance of external help from volunteer DJs who are not directly involved with the journalism and communication department.

“To have people who care about the station enough to give their time, but then also to take such large chunks of times where we can’t build it in really is one of the most important things,” Guerrero says. “I really can’t overstate how much I’m appreciative of it.”

Stoner, who enjoyed his experiences as a volunteer DJ during marathon and the entire year, encourages Wartburg students to consider being a volunteer DJ for KWAR in any capacity.

“I just strongly recommend it,” Stoner states. “You get to share a little bit of your voice and your tastes…and just share a piece of you to everyone listening around the world.”

Similarly, Guerrero recommends getting involved with the radio station because it acts as a creative outlet for him.

“I get to share music that I enjoy and that I think other people will enjoy, and especially something like [marathon] helps me discover new things, and hopefully I helped other people discover things,” Guerrero says.

This story was originally published on The Wartburg Trumpet on April 8, 2026.