The broadcast teams at KTIL-KMBD have been providing Tillamook High School sports for more than a quarter century - and despite numerous hazards, they make the connections.

OMED: Michael's last job, pior to catching a rare disease that caused him to shrink thirty feet in height, was as a temporary flag pole for ad hoc sporting events.  These days he runs  the sports desk of the Tillamook Headlight Herald   Once a legendary actor who starred in such classic sport films as The Super Bowl Network Vacuum Tube Mystery and Atilla the Hun: Europe's First Scrum, during his off hours (which is most of the time) he now haunts the damp ways of the coastal cheese capitol, carrying a sign that says, "Will work for old  gym socks."  (Photo: Publicity shot of Mike O'Brien during his days in Hollywood.) 

Recently, USA TODAY interviewed ESPN  broadcast legend Chris Berman, who recalled at the age of 23, when he climbed upon a school bus to get a phone signal to broadcast a high school game, early in his career.  
   "It's primitive radio. It's improvisational. But you know what? If you can do that, you can do anything - it puts hair on your chest, "said Berman.  
   One has to wonder if Berman ever encountered some of the challenges which have greeted KTIL-KM B D in its travels, over the years, on the North Coast and throughout Oregon.   Back in the early '70s, Harold Schild and Al Berger were among the first to bring Tillamook sports to the airwaves. The two had to read commercials, and find locations in strange locales for a land line telephone connection. And it wasn't cheap, hooking up those land lines. It could cost as much as $200 a broadcast. 

Radio Remembrances

   More recently, since Van Moe bought the station in 1987, the technology has changed a bit, allowing for cellphone utilization, but the trunkload of "quick fix" riggings, continues to grow, as the challenges present themselves. Be it rain, wind, lack of signal or needing to be on some rooftop to broadcast, somehow, the job gets done. Tillamook listeners are tuned in, but may not be aware of how the previous hour of setting the thing up may have gone. 
   A conversation with Van Moe,  Randy Schild, who has been calling play-by-play for well over a decade, and sidekicks Dave Sherbondy and Nathan Radcliffe, who have been "color" men alongside Schild, yields a lot of laughs and nervous memories about how one or another game almost went down the drain, broadcast wise. But, they've never missed one, somehow.

   The first thing to know, is that all these guys work a full time job elsewhere, before hopping into a weeknight rainstorm to drive to Rainier or Scappoose, with a trunk full of wires and gadgets and some raingear.They're often getting home at 2 a.m., with a similar trek scheduled two days later, to another distant zip code. A glimpse at the schedule informed Sherbondy, for example, that he's working five straight nights in January.
   Some legendary travel episodes exist. During the '96 floods, getting to Scappoose and St. Helens could take hours with forced alternative routes the only option. It's easy to run into being re-routed on the blue highways, which constitute the Valco and Cowapa League locations. Never mind the preseason jaunts to Estacada or Molalla for a 5 p.m. contest. Waldport or Philomath on a Tuesday night can color the remainder of the week, energy wise. 

More partners than Elizabeth Taylor

   Schild said he has worked with 13 on-air partners since he started, covering everything from football, to basketball, to wrestling, to softball, to baseball, and yes, even volleyball at the state tourney.  Most recently, Radcliffe and Sherbondy have been regularly paired with Schild, with an occasional guest by virtue of someone not being available. Unlike other broadcast teams around the state, these guys are not "industry people," and have careers elsewhere, which makes what they do play very much like a gift to the community. 
   All three, and the others who help at times,  have to "play sick," even if they're under the weather, and positioned on a chilly rooftop at Yamhill-Carlton or deep in some rainy end zone, where the sometimes-elusive signal has been achieved. The box in the trunk has 200 yards of wire, duct tape to hold down paper in the wind, chargers for dead batteries, cellophane for the occasion that calls for taping the cellphone to a tree or pole in a storm, for reception, and the list goes on. 

   The broadcast team is sometimes parked right next to a pep band or the stadium speakers and all have climbed perilous ladders in rainstorms, lugging equipment with them, hoping they cam do a halftime show in a breezeway or different location, as the climate dictates numb fingers and toes.
   And the job itself is full of on-air time, which in itself can be extremely challenging. The state playoff basketball game last season, when Coquille took the opening tip and stood still for eight minutes and a few timeouts - Schild and Sherbondy had to talk their way through that compelling action. An on-field injury can add a half hour to the repertoire for the evening, no dead air allowed. But being friends, they find a way to keep listeners involved and interested, even if it requires one calling the other a "half-wit," or having an on-field commentator share the fact that "the burritos did not agree with him."  

Fox Paws and the Personal Touch

   Then there was the instantly regrettable comment about another school  having some "hefty cheerleaders." These things are bound to happen, but they happen less with this group than most regional broadcast teams. They're quite good at what they do.  And the chief reason for their ability to pull it off, may well be, quite simply, that they enjoy what they're involved in. It's a safe bet you'll see either Schild, Radcliffe or Sherbondy at a game from which they have the night off from broadcasting. It matters to them and they have fun watching the kids compete.
   Moe hasn't ever lost a sponsor for the high school sports programming. The same cannot be said about, for example, the Portland Trailblazers. 
   "People really care about this level of broadcasting, we recognize the importance to the community, and so do our sponsors," said Moe.

   This fall, during football season, Doris Bennett was in Manhattan. Her boys were playing on Friday night, so she called the station from New York, and asked to be put on hold so she could listen to the broadcast, as the station plays its FM program for those on call-waiting. She was able to hear the entire game and as Schild quipped, "What better night's entertainment could Manhattan offer, than a Cheesemaker football game?"
    When Radcliffe and his wife Melissa were celebrating the birth of their first child  this fall, in Portland, the announcers got a call with the good news. Just by chance, while switching channels near Puyallup, in a rainstorm, one of their friends from Tillamook, Barb Seymour, heard the good news on the radio, en route back home to Tillamook, well out of the normal broadcast range. Would that make your night or what? 

   Radio coverage of our kids can make your night as well. If you can't be there live, or want to know how a road game is going, it's a gift to be able to feel the game and the way it's going, through the voices of these guys. As the sign off states, at the end of their broadcast, "Good night and good sports."  

   Most assuredly.

© 2004 Michael O'Brien