Radio Neighbors Begin 77th Years in HS Sports
September 6, 2018
By John Johnson
MHSAA Director of Broadcast Properties
Local radio coverage of high school sports can still be found in a lot of places these days – and for a couple of stations, they’re celebrating 77 years of service to school sports in 2018-19.
WTCM-AM in Traverse City and WJMS-AM in Ironwood are literally adjacent on your radio dial, but they’re 250 miles apart as the crow flies across Lake Michigan and through a lot of northeast Wisconsin. In 1941, they started their streak of broadcasting the preps into their local communities.
Mind you, there weren’t that many radio stations as you might think back then, when it was the only electronic medium. WJMS had signed on in November of 1931 and was only one of two stations in the Upper Peninsula at the time and one of 19 statewide, according to Federal Radio Commission records. One of the early issues the station faced was interference with its signal because of the density of iron mines in the area.
When WTCM went on the air early in 1941, there were still only 28 radio stations in our state; five were in the U.P., and WTCM was the only station in the Lower Peninsula north of Saginaw.
Les Biederman owned WTCM and was quickly persuaded by the locals to broadcast a Traverse City High School basketball game.
“So he got the equipment ready and got everything set up, they got permission and everything,” said Jack O’Malley, current program director at the station and a long-time play-by-play voice. “The night of the game, the superintendent says ‘You can’t do the game – the local newspaper is not real happy. They said if people listen to the game, they won’t buy the newspaper in the morning. So you can’t do the game.’
“So the town had already been told – they were promoting it; and when 7 o’clock rolled around, they went on the air and they announced they were going to do the game tonight, but permission had been revoked, so we can’t do it. And then they left the microphones open at the gym so that everybody could hear the basketball dribbling, the crowd cheering, the horns honking.
“About 15 minutes later, the superintendent was at Les’ door, saying that the phones had gone crazy, you’ve got to do the game. They started with the game and we’ve been doing high school sports ever since.”
WTCM added football and other sports to the mix over time, which played well with Traverse City High School being the only public school in town. The station’s focus these days is football, alternating between Central and West High Schools.
“The whole idea is that we’re part of the community, and WTCM has always been a community radio station,” O’Malley said. “High school sports are all about community. People say, I remember when this kid played on that team and you watch all the kids as they grow up. It’s really a connection through the ages.”
The Biederman family continues to serve radio listeners in the north, with Ross Biederman as the president of what has become the Midwestern Broadcasting Company with four stations in the Traverse City market and two in the Alpena area. And yes, one of the Alpena stations is involved in covering high school sports.
The paper trail isn’t quite as tidy when documenting the history at WJMS. The station moved from its original frequency of 1420 to 1450 after being on the air for about six years, then to 630 in 1947 and its present 590 on the AM dial in 1968. Veteran observers of U.P. radio concluded that WJMS began broadcasting high school games in 1941, which was confirmed by several newspaper articles in the old Ironwood Times from that year.
The station’s signal footprint, which would eventually reach from Marquette to well west of Duluth, Minn., by day, was the early stomping grounds for some great broadcasters.
“I can remember when I was 9 or 10 years old, listening to Bob Olson and Joe Blake doing high school basketball and football in the early 60’s,” said Rod Halverson, who currently calls games for the station. “We had four local schools, Hurley (Wis.), Bessemer, Ironwood and Wakefield, which were all in the Michigan-Wisconsin Conference; and we covered those four schools. I remember listening and seeing those guys at the basketball games.”
Bob Olson, who died earlier this year, and Joe Blake went on from WJMS to purchase WMPL in Hancock in 1969. Olson would spend 35 years behind the microphone calling Michigan Tech ice hockey games and was legendary for his high-pitched tag going into commercial breaks: “This is Huskie Hockey from Houghton!” Blake would purchase WCKD in Ishpeming in 1971 (which later became WMQT-WZAM in Marquette) and run its operations until his death in 2004, calling Northern Michigan ice hockey and volleyball games. Both gentlemen received all kinds of accolades over the years.
But it was the style of an another announcer who followed Olson and Blake – Harry Rizze – who Halverson has worked hard to apply as he calls the games now.
“Harry Rizze was doing games when I started playing basketball,” Halverson said. “He made the games really personable. He would get to know the players by their first names – and he would use their first names on the air sometimes – that’s how close he got to the program. I thought it was a really nice touch. I’m doing some of that now, and I’m trying to emulate the two guys before me – Harry Rizze and Gary Aho.”
And in a place like the Iron Range of the Western U.P., there’s nothing like local radio covering local high school games.
“Some of the players I broadcast now, I played against their dads,” Halverson said. “You get to know everybody. Up here, we cover all of the schools the best we can. I feel bad for the areas that don’t have radio coverage.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Longtime WJMS broadcaster Harry Rizze conducts an interview. (Middle) Late WTCM owner Les Biederman.
Century of School Sports: Everything We Do Begins with Participation
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
March 5, 2025
For 100 years the MHSAA and its member schools have trumpeted the many benefits of educational athletics. The list of positive reasons to play has only grown.
But every idea and effort to make school sports excellent starts with one underlying theme that has served as a primary motivation from the beginning:
Participation.
The MHSAA long has been driven by a desire to see as many students participate in sports as possible, within a framework of rules that intentionally makes that opportunity so valuable that playing for the school team becomes the dream for thousands of kids all over our state.
And MHSAA member schools have a long history of succeeding at that mission.
A few comparisons and a decent share of context are necessary to explain how. We will dive into some numbers, but these two points sum up the story:
The total number of high school students in Michigan has been shrinking annually over several years – high-school aged population in this state is down 21 percent since 2006-07. But the numbers of students playing sports at MHSAA schools has grown three straight years and has declined by only 13.5 percent over the same stretch of time.
Michigan participation in high school sports annually outpaces where it ranked nationally in high school-aged population. We may have fewer students than some states, but more of them are playing more sports for their schools.
How do we know all this?
Every spring since 1971, the MHSAA has reported how many athletes from member schools participate – by sport – as part of a survey from the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). Those numbers are crunched by the NFHS for all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and over the last several years the MHSAA has taken that data and then compared how Michigan participation stacks up to state populations of people aged 14-17.
(The NFHS collects data on all school sports, whether they receive state association sponsorship or not. Participants also are counted once for every sport they participate in, so two-sport athletes are counted twice, three-sport athletes are counted three times, etc.).
For this narrative’s sake, let’s start with the 1977-78 school. By then, several girls sports had begun to receive MHSAA sponsorship and also had a few years to get established and grow. For that school year, the MHSAA reported 242,616 participants. Just under a decade later, for 1985-86, that total had grown to 265,227 (and a few more girls sports had been added), and those totals continued to rise during the 1990s reaching 295,858 in 2000-01.
A key high point came in 2006-07, when the MHSAA reported 320,479 total participants in all sports at member schools including 313,093 in MHSAA-sponsored sports. The grand totals then shifted downward slowly once again – but in proportion to falling student enrollment at MHSAA member schools, which has dropped nearly 113,000 students (21 percent) since that notable year. It’s also fair to make an educated guess – because students are counted once for every sport played – that a trend toward sport specialization also affected those numbers to some degree.
Fast forward to today. For the 2023-24 school year, there were 270,664 participants in MHSAA sports, plus another 19,920 in sports not sponsored by the association (weight lifting, etc.). So while Michigan hasn’t approached 300,000 participants in more than a decade, the total for MHSAA sports this past year was only 13.5 percent fewer than that 2006-07 season – again, compared to 21-percent fewer students at those schools. And the even better news? Participation has increased three straight years coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another telling comparison is how Michigan participation continues to compare nationally.
Going back to at least the 2012-13 school year – not counting 2019-20 and 2020-21, when the NFHS survey was suspended because of COVID-19’s effect on school sports – Michigan consistently has ranked either seventh or eighth in participation nationally, falling past that ranking only once to ninth. For 2023-24, Michigan ranked eighth for participation.
Meanwhile, Michigan ranked ninth nationally for high school-aged population from 2012-13 through 2015-16 before sliding into its current 10th spot on that list. So for this past school year, participation at MHSAA member schools ranked two spots ahead of its ranking for high school-aged population.
The first step to receiving the benefits of school sports is getting out there and playing them. And Michigan high schoolers are continuing to do so – both at rates that compare well historically over the last 50 years, and compared to states across the country of similar sizes. This has long been a point of MHSAA pride, and will continue to be a primary focus of its work.
Previous "Century of School Sports" Spotlights
Feb. 25: Slogans & Logos Remain Unforgettable Parts of MHSAA History - Read
Feb. 19: MHSAA Tickets Continue to Provide Fan-Friendly Value - Read
Feb. 11: We Recognize Those Who Make Our Games Go - Read
Feb. 4: WISL Conference Continues to Inspire Aspiring Leaders - Read
Jan. 28: Michigan's National Impact Begins at NFHS' Start - Read
Jan. 21: Awards Celebrate Well-Rounded Educational Experience - Read
Jan. 14: Predecessors Laid Foundation for MHSAA's Formation - Read
Jan. 9: MHSAA Blazes Trail Into Cyberspace - Read
Dec. 31: State's Storytellers Share Winter Memories - Read
Dec. 17: MHSAA Over Time - Read
Dec. 10: On This Day, December 13, We Will Celebrate - Read
Dec. 3: MHSAA Work Guided by Representative Council - Read
Nov. 26: Finals Provide Future Pros Early Ford Field Glory - Read
Nov. 19: Connection at Heart of Coaches Advancement Program - Read
Nov. 12: Good Sports are Winners Then, Now & Always - Read
Nov. 5: MHSAA's Home Sweet Home - Read
Oct. 29: MHSAA Summits Draw Thousands to Promote Sportsmanship - Read
Oct. 23: Cross Country Finals Among MHSAA's Longest Running - Read
Oct. 15: State's Storytellers Share Fall Memories - Read
Oct. 8: Guided by 4 S's of Educational Athletics - Read
Oct. 1: Michigan Sends 10 to National Hall of Fame - Read
Sept. 25: MHSAA Record Books Filled with 1000s of Achievements - Read
Sept. 18: Why Does the MHSAA Have These Rules? - Read
Sept. 10: Special Medals, Patches to Commemorate Special Year - Read
Sept. 4: Fall to Finish with 50th Football Championships - Read
Aug. 28: Let the Celebration Begin - Read