It’s 6:30 p.m., an hour before tipoff, but the gym at Flanagan High School is already packed when the radio guys from the big city pull up to the rear door.
OK, so Pontiac has only about 11,000 people, but that can seem pretty big when your town has 1,100. And while WJEZ-FM 93.7 isn’t exactly network, don’t tell that to the fans in Flanagan’s cozy, immaculate gym, who greet the three-man crew like visiting royalty.
Sure, there are no fancy media accommodations for the night’s encounter between Flanagan and Fieldcrest of nearby Minonk–just a card table and plastic chairs in a corner of the gym. But the WJEZ trio isn’t on the air for five minutes before two grammar-school kids materialize, bearing cups of water.
“We joke about it,” said Marc Edwards, who will help handle pregame, halftime and postgame broadcast duties, “but when we go to a small community, they treat us almost like ESPN.”
It sounds ludicrous, but WJEZ is more important than a network to the folks at Flanagan, Fieldcrest and the 11 other central Illinois high schools the station covers.
One way or another, those fans will get their fill of Bulls, Bears, Cubs and Sox coverage. But who other than JEZ and its sister station, WPOK-AM 1080, is going to care about the likes of Fieldcrest vs. Flanagan, even if it is a battle of Mid-State Conference unbeatens?
When it comes to local news, there is little that WJEZ doesn’t care about. This is a station that may put close to 50 residents in one morning on the air to deliver birthday greetings.
“Our goal is to cover our local market,” said sports director Mark Myre, who will handle play-by-play duties. “If Jenny Murphy has 15 aces in a volleyball match, we want to know.”
In truth, Myre and his part-ners don’t cover the community, they are the community. Myre and game analyst Tim Scott grew up within a 45-minute drive of Pontiac in towns Flanagan’s size. Edwards is from St. Paul but has been with the stations since 1976.
The result is a steady, familiar banter with fans as the three make their way to the cafeteria to check out the pregame chili supper.
“Our philos-ophy is there’s more to life than setting the equipment up,” Myre said as a woman, greeting him by first name, refills his glass with fruit punch. “We like to meet and talk to the fans.”
He reflects that in his play-by-play, punctuating it with references to fans present and not. Like some small-town Harry Caray, Myre thanks by name five boys who arrive with more water and sends “a happy 59th birthday to (Principal) Chuck Snook over at Flanagan High School.”
None of this, however, not even the crew’s radio hello to Fieldcrest coach Matt Winkler’s wife, Julie, who couldn’t get a baby-sitter, detracts from the broadcast’s professionalism. The 29-year-old Myre, who joined the stations in 1990, has a smooth, rapid-fire delivery that lets him keep up with the action easily and accurately.
Scott, 40, who works full time for the State of Illinois but has been working with Myre since they met at a 1991 church league softball game, slips in and out quickly with appropriate insights. The 41-year-old Edwards, who will be a media inductee into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame on April 26, feeds them statistics.
“We try to do it like the national networks,” Myre said.
The three realize, however, that the game–and its players–are the stars. They neither rip the athletes nor dwell excessively on questionable calls; and they stay impartial, a necessity because both schools are in their coverage area.
Thanks to school consolidation, that area includes close to 45 communities in an area midway between Joliet and Bloomington. WJEZ gives them about 160 high school basketball games a year, including girls games, plus close to 45 other contests, ranging from football to wrestling to even an occasional junior high event.
The 1,000-watt AM station goes off the air at sundown, so 25,000-watt WJEZ, which has about a 60-mile broadcast radius, handles almost the entire play-by-play load.
But if WJEZ is busy, it’s hardly extraordinary. Spinning the radio dial on a cruise along any Illinois highway on a Friday night will unleash a kaleidoscope of small-town sports.
According to the Illinois High School Association, about 120 commercial stations broadcast boys basketball games, with almost 100 doing girls games too. And 93 stations, most of them in smaller markets, carry the “IHSA Sports Report,” a thrice-weekly 5 1/2-minute interview and information show.
High school play-by-play isn’t as common as it was 50 years ago, but it has remained a vital force and seems to be growing.
“I think in the late ’70s and ’80s, radio stations were downsizing, and there was a lot of automation,” IHSA assistant executive director Jim Flynn said. “But like the print medium, they’re learning the high school market is a pretty expansive one and that if you lose people at an early age, you’ve lost them.
“I think it’s like the stock market. The bear was out; now it’s getting bullish.”
Although many stations struggle financially, there is still money to be made in small-town sports radio. A typical WJEZ basketball broadcast, for example, has 30 to 40 commercials.
The station also has a one-hour sports interview show Thursday night and a 90-minute block Saturday morning devoted to the teams in its coverage area.
Station owner Collins Miller plans to expand play-by-play coverage later this year when he opens a second FM station, with a signal tower about 20 miles northeast of Pontiac. That may mean more money for Miller, but also more of a chance to service his listeners.
“It gives the community spirit and pride, and that’s important for quality of life,” said Miller, a Naperville High School graduate who bought the stations in 1981.
“My son played basketball for Pontiac, and I saw how it affected him in the community–playing and having it on radio. Younger kids looked up to him.”
In a small town, life revolves around the church and the school. It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of high school sports, and that carries over to radio coverage.
Jim Kinkade, clad in an orange Flanagan Falcons sweater, explains it as he waits for his team to try to overcome a 29-23 halftime deficit.
“It’s a community affair, and I really enjoy it,” the 80-year-old father of nine Flanagan students said. “A few years ago, I was recovering from surgery, and those (game) broadcasts meant a lot.”
WJEZ has no ratings service for its games, but Scott says the sidewalks work as well as Arbitron.
“It’s amazing how many people listen,” he said. “They’ll walk you down the street, and you get to know them.”
Myre, who also sells commercials, and Edwards, the stations’ operations manager, try to spread their coverage around early in the season, then hone in on the best teams and games. An SRO crowd of about 800 people proves they made a good choice tonight.
Both teams play with almost desperate intensity. Their fans hang on every move, and almost no one leaves, even though Fieldcrest pulls away in the third period and wins by 11. By 9:30 p.m., Edwards, Myre and Scott are packed for the 12-mile trip back to Pontiac, already talking about the next night’s game.
“We’re gym rats,” Edwards said. “We almost went into withdrawal a couple weeks ago when we didn’t have a game for 10 days because of snowouts.”
It’s 9:50 p.m., and the radio guys are in the station checking to see if Pontiac won. The facilities are modern, though small, but Edwards and Myre like where they are and claim no ambitions to land in bigger ponds.
“We love what we’re doing,” Myre said. “We do have fun.”
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e-mail Barry Temkin at BarTem@aol.com
