UCLA announcer Josh Lewin keeps a hectic schedule

Josh Lewin arrived in Salt Lake City on Saturday having only commenced another hectic weekend. There were two more flights and an early-morning drive to go.

“Not to be flip about it,” Lewin said, “but Utah’s the wrong place to have landed this morning, not being super easy to find caffeine.”

A jolt was needed after Lewin boarded a 6 a.m. flight from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York to Salt Lake City before hopping a cab to Provo so that he could call UCLA’s game against Brigham Young on Saturday night at LaVell Edwards Stadium as the Bruins’ radio play-by-play announcer alongside color analyst Matt Stevens.

Afterward, Lewin planned to fly to Los Angeles with the Bruins, arriving around 3 a.m. Sunday. He would rent a car and immediately drive to San Diego, napping only a few hours before calling the Chargers’ early-afternoon game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Qualcomm Stadium. Then he would take a red-eye flight from San Diego to New York so that he could call the Mets’ game against the Atlanta Braves on Monday night at Citi Field.

Just more back-to-back-to-back madness for one of radio’s busiest broad-casters. Working for the Mets, Chargers and Bruins concurrently can triple the challenges of the job, particularly in September when the teams’ schedules overlap.

“I’m the opposite of complaining about it,” said Lewin, 47, who is in his first year as the voice of the Bruins. “I look at it as just a really cool challenge to get from Point A to Point B to Point C. It’s kind of like you get to star in your own version of ‘The Amazing Race.’ ”

Lewin is often the first to arrive, taking the earliest possible flight to reach his next destination. He’s such a stickler about connections that he rebooked a flight into Las Vegas’ McCarran Airport last week just so he would be closer inside the terminal to his next flight when he landed.

The Mets have made Lewin’s tripleheader weekends possible by granting him permission to miss Saturday and Sunday games in September, but there have still been conflicts. Lewin missed a Mets playoff game last year and wasn’t there when Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers threw for 503 yards against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field.

Adding UCLA football and basketball makes his schedule even nuttier. But it was something Lewin wanted after developing a childhood fascination with the Bruins while growing up in Rochester, N.Y.

“Believe it or not, and it’s stupid as hell, it’s my last name rhymes with Bruin,” Lewin said. “I’m dead serious. I was like 6 years old and I would pretend I was a sportscaster. ‘I’m Josh Lewin, voice of the Bruins.’ ”

It became a reality when a vacancy opened on UCLA’s radio team earlier this year, fulfilling a second dream for Lewin. He had also long fantasized about calling Mets games, something he has done for five seasons. He’s in his 12th season with the Chargers.

All those games can mean more time spent on prep work than in the broadcast booth. Lewin estimates he spends about three hours getting ready for a baseball game and from 12 to 18 hours preparing for a football game. Lewin started studying Texas A&M in July for UCLA’s season opener.

It would be enough to make Lewin groggy if it weren’t for the rush of game day.

“If it happens to be a night where you only grab three or four hours of sleep,” Lewin said, “there’s always so much adrenaline that comes from being at a game and having the headsets on and you hear the crowd noise and you hear the band. That red light goes on and you’re not going to fall asleep while ‘Sons of Westwood’ is playing.”

ben.bolch@latimes.com

Twitter: @latbbolch