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MIDDLETOWN — Middletown High School has won seven boys basketball state championships, an all-time state record.
The players on those teams read like an all-star team: Jerry Lucas, Shelby Linville, Paul Lansaw, Bob Cole, Owen Lawson, Don Barnette and countless others. The players have come and gone, but one thing has remained constant: All the games were heard on WPFB 910-AM.
That all comes to an end tonight. Since WPFB, its FM sister, The Rebel, and a Portsmouth station were sold for $6.75 million to the Northern Kentucky University public radio station, Middies games no longer will be broadcast.
An era is coming to a close.
For more than 60 years, WPFB and the Middies have enjoyed a wonderful marriage. It was hard to think of one and not the other. This is a divorce that few ever expected. But when Shawn Stidham, play-by--play announcer, and color commentator Tim Williams sign off tonight after the Middies-Princeton boys game at Wade E. Miller, it will be over.
Gary Lebo, MHS athletic director, said losing that coverage will be “a loss for this community and athletic department.”
Stidham admits he’s still denying that the radio no longer will broadcast high school games.
“That’s hard to believe,” he said.
Williams, a Waynesville High School graduate who starred as a place kicker at Ohio State University, joined Stidham this basketball season. He quickly was introduced to the Miller Gym and the traditions stored in the locker rooms and hallways.
Last week, he broadcast a Middies game at Mason High School, which, arguably, has one of the finest gyms in the Greater Miami Conference, or the state for that matter.
Don’t tell that to Williams.
“You can’t build tradition,” he said. “You have to earn it. Middletown basketball has it.”
In just a short time, Williams has become a Middie fan.
“It’s been a great ride and I’m glad I was part of it,” he said.
Dan Humphreys, 83, was one of the first sports announcers at WPFB. He announced hundreds and hundreds of games around the state — in gyms smaller than downtown Jacksonburg — but one game, one play in Middies lore, stands out.
In the 1957 state semifinal at St. John Arena in Columbus, Middletown trailed Toledo McComber by seven points with 63 ticks left.
Amazingly, the Middies cut the deficit to two, when Lucas made a 30-footer at the buzzer, sending the game into overtime and the MHS fans scrambling for their tickets. If Middletown won the game in OT, the fans needed their stubs to get into the championship game the next night.
When Lucas hit the shot — beyond what would be the NBA three-point line — Humphreys remembers Johnson screaming: “It’s good! It’s good!”
At least Johnson saw the final seconds.
Jack Gordon, the “Voice of the Middies,” who called games for 30 years, remembered a Middies game at Xavier Fieldhouse. The broadcasting team — Gordon, Carel Cosby and Fred Finney — was so far from the court, Gordon could only see half the court. He called the game from a telephone booth, while Finney yelled what was happening on the court.
“That,” Gordon said, “was the goofiest of nights.”
That, of course, only added to their friendship. They were an odd couple plus one.
“You could not have put three more different personalities together,” Gordon said. “If you knew Jack Gordon, Carel Cosby and Fred Finney, you would not have put us together.”
Gordon paused then added: “You know, those relationships, they were my favorite part.”
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