Bacon.
The most beautiful thing on earth.
Bacon's the best.
Even the frying of bacon sounds like applause.
It's like...
Aaaaah!
Yeah!
Bacon!
You want to know how good bacon is to improve other food?
They wrap it in bacon.
If it weren't for bacon,
we wouldn't even know what a water chestnut is.
Thank you Bacon, sincerely water chestnut the third.
And those bits of bacon,
bits of bacon like the fairy dust of the food community.
You don't want this bacon potato?
Brrrrrrr!
Now it's your favorite part of the meal.
Not interested in a salad?
Bipity-bipity bacon!
I just turned it into an entree.
But once you put bacon in a salad,
it's no longer a salad.
It just becomes a game of find the bacon and the lettuce.
It's like you're panning for gold.
Here we go!
Bacon!
It's the most wonderful time of the year.
With the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you be a good cheer.
It's the most wonderful time of the year.
It's the most wonderful time of the year.
It's the happiest season of all.
With those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings when friends come to call.
It's the happiest season of all.
There'll be parties for hosting.
Good morning.
708 at WRJ and Radio.
I'm Don Rosen.
Civic media.
Home town radio.
Refressed.
I made a big error in the past hour.
I said it's sunny.
It's cloudy.
Looks like doom and gloom out there.
Cloudy 37 degrees right now.
Cloudy old age today with a hundred forty three.
Chance of rain tonight.
Loads thirty nine.
Rain likely tomorrow with a hundred forty five.
Shame on me.
I can't believe I said it was sunny.
I'm looking right at it.
It's like the doom and gloom.
Anyway, it's just cloudy.
No rain today.
Highs near forty three, but thirty seven degrees right now.
Let me tell you a little bit about our next guest here because
hi, Todd.
I did a complete investigation of you.
I had detectives.
I had detectives out searching your history to find that all about you
and the shenanigans going on in your life.
And when you hear this, ladies and gentlemen, listen what this guy has been up to.
Todd Clark began his role as the association's director of
communication.
This is with the WIA on July 1st, 2000.
His responsibilities include overseeing the print production aspect of the association,
internal and external communications, media relations, corporate marketing,
sponsorships, advertising publications, tournament record, sportsmanship,
assisting with website maintenance and the football playoffs, as well as processing
NFHS awards and recognitions and the WIA award of excellence.
By the way, that stands for national federation of state high school associations.
That's the NFHS.
At the national level, he served on the NFHS records committee from 2007 to 2010.
He also served that their annual summer meeting advisory committee from 2009 to 2010.
In 2012, he received the NFHS citation for outstanding contributions to high school sports.
He also served on the NFHS network leadership circle.
He served one year on the heart of the art selection committee and is currently a member
of the NFHS spirit of sport committee.
He also presented on topics of their summer meetings.
We're not even halfway done with you yet.
Art detectives really, I'm not done.
I got some other stuff here.
He received the association friend award presented by the Wisconsin Association of School
Schools in 2007.
He was bestowed with the privilege to be the presider of the 2022 NFHS Hall of Fame
Ceremonies.
That was in San Antonio, Texas.
I assume you got a free ride on that one, right?
He didn't have to pay.
He joined the executive staff after serving nine years as the sports information director
at the university.
He was handsome lacrosse from 1991 to 2000 prior to the UW lacrosse position.
He was sports information director assistant at Southern Illinois Carbondale from 1990 to 1991.
Let's go on and on about you.
My goodness.
I feel bad.
All I did was play music on the radio as a disc jockey all those years and you were out there changing the world.
Todd Clark with the assistant.
That's an old on that that may just mean I've been around a long time.
The Wisconsin inter-scholastic.
Let me see if we got this w i a the Wisconsin inter-scholastic association of America.
I'm all right.
Inter-scholastic athletic association.
The w i a too many acronyms to remember there.
Anyway, congrats.
I've dealt with you for many, many years by other incarnation here at w r j n.
You are one of the biggest pusher of high school sports no matter what sport it is.
Just to make sure it's it's working.
It's done right and it gets on the radio and on television.
And you know, you got such a great personality for it.
And you've been doing it all your life, all your adult life.
And, you know, we thank you for it.
And you know who thanks you more?
The parents of the kids playing sports.
Well, thanks, Don.
And this is again, without, you know, the radio stations, the TV stations,
and the media to provide those, those stories and broadcasts of student athletes around the state of Wisconsin.
You know, the exposure of their abilities and what they're able to do wouldn't it be as readable, readable for you.
So thank you and all that you do.
And there are radio stations across the state that continue to broadcast high school sports, including w r j n.
We're back with high school football in the fall.
Or is it late August?
We're back with high school football.
And civic media says this is what we're here for.
And this is what we're going to do.
And we're very happy to be back with that because, you know, and again,
I was a parent of, um, of a person who was in sports.
She was a swim.
I thought there's a swimmer.
And she, um, she had the swim meets all over the state.
I didn't miss one.
I also videotaped every one of them, which you would wave.
Stop taping everything, but I taped them.
And you know what?
She's 43 years old today and she loves it.
And she's happy.
I taped all those game.
All those swim meets because you can look back now at your friends and everything that went on there.
So you, do you cover all sports in the WIA or what sports do you cover?
Yeah, every sport that's here, I've certainly covered based on, you know,
we do have a small office here, Don.
We're 21 strong and, you know, there's one communications director.
I have quality help in the office, but every sport needs to be covered.
We want to make sure, you know, moms and dads feel there.
There are child's sports are treated like any other sport.
You know, a lot of football, a lot of basketball.
And volleyball is, you know, one of the main sports as well.
And, you know, baseball and softball.
But my daughter was to a swimmer.
So, and I did the same thing to you.
I think I have every meat that you've been.
So, again, it's, it's basically a lifelong love of sports.
And you really, because of the hours and the travel that's involved with it,
you really, it really needs to be a labor of love.
And it is.
Now, with high school sports, it's, it's, it's still what it used to be with football.
In other words, is the money still there?
These schools, I know budgets are tight everywhere.
Are they tightening it up too much to the kids still have their football fields,
their uniforms.
They still have everything going right for them.
Even now we're talking baseball.
We're talking lacrosse.
We're talking volleyball.
We're talking basketball.
All the sports.
They still have the wild for it.
Yes, I believe there is because I think the schools recognize the importance of education based activities.
Again, there are, as far as the average is one to three percent of a school's overall budget.
So, I mean, for that, it's a great value at that percentage of the budget.
So, and again, the things that are learned through these school-based programs,
the research shows is something that I think the school's value and embrace.
Did I tell you a little secret?
This is a personal note here.
When I went to high school, I just say his name is Chuck.
I won't use his last name.
He was the quarterback on the team.
Good looking guy, but he was the quarterback.
Big guy, big broad shoulders.
Tall guy was really good.
He was our quarterback.
And the head cheerleader, I won't use her name.
The head cheerleader was this beautiful young girl, very tall too, and they got together.
And they were at the prom together.
They were the items in the school.
The head cheerleaders with the football quarterback.
And they eventually got married.
And they had children.
And it went to my 23rd union back in the 90s.
And by this time, they were divorced.
And I was sitting there kind of bored.
And I was sitting with a friend of mine.
And all of a sudden, we're looking at the beginning of the dance floor and they start fighting.
And we pulled up our chairs.
I said, oh, this is good.
This is going to be worth the reunion to watch the, because they always flaunted.
There was holding hands in school, the head quarterback, the head cheerleader with the quarterback.
And now they're fighting, arguing over something on the dance floor, yelling at each other.
And we put Bob Shrek and I pulled up our chairs and they said, oh, this is going to be good.
These football players in high school throwing it in my face the whole day.
Now I'm going to get even with them and just watch this fight.
And I follow both of them on Facebook.
And I said to Bob Shrek, I said, this made the trip to New York just, this was it.
This was worth it to see this happen.
But I feel bad because they're very nice people.
And again, they're doing fine now.
They're both separated.
And they both have grandchildren.
And so they're doing fine now.
But it was always the football players in school.
I mean, I was never my mom wouldn't let me get hurt.
So I couldn't play football.
She wouldn't want me getting hurt with anything.
But it's a great program.
And I wonder how many people from high school sports in Wisconsin went on to the pros?
Do you have any figures on that or no?
You know, we don't done.
And again, we try to keep track of those now whenever they make it to the pros.
I know we have things called social media now where we can promote that.
And you know where kids had, first of all, going to college and then make it to the pros
and just based on what school they participated at and into what sport.
We were able to track that recently.
But you know, you go back 40, 50, 60, 70 years, the association has been around for 127 years.
Whoa.
You just don't have those numbers up to this point.
So, you know, to start it would be, you know, we would probably have a pretty good number
and get that back through, you know, maybe 1990.
But prior to that, I'm not quite sure what information is available to get a complete list like that.
Okay, well, we come back from our break.
We're going to talk with Todd Clark from the WIA about the competitive balance and the performance factor.
Also, I want to talk about high school.
You've got to keep your grades up because football is great, baseball is great, basketball is great,
lacrosse, they're all great, but you need to learn.
And that's what's going to get you through life.
And we're going to talk more about that coming up.
Todd Clark from the Wisconsin Interest Galactic Athletic Association.
I got to write that time, right?
Got it.
And then we've written down.
All right, we're coming up at Civic Media, WRJ and hometown radio refreshed.
Stay right where you are.
Music
All the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful.
And since we've no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
Man, it doesn't show snow.
Todd Clark is here.
Todd from the Wisconsin Interest Galactic Athletic Association, otherwise known as the WIA
either involved in all high school sports around the state of Wisconsin.
Then you guys don't regulate anything, do you?
You just, what do you do, you have rules and regulations?
How does it work?
What do you guys do?
Yeah, we are the association here in Wisconsin.
There's 51 of state associations around the country, including District of Columbia.
And we set the rules as far as eligibility rules, different lengths,
those types of things in the state of Wisconsin.
Now the NFHS that you mentioned earlier, they have the playing rules of the game.
How many minutes in a game, how many free throws on a foul?
Those types of things are from the National Office of the NFHS.
ours is more of Wisconsin, the rules that pertain to school based athletics here in the state.
Let's talk about this too.
This is the competitive balance and performance factor, what's that all about?
Yeah, the competitive balance plan, which, you know, we have talked about competitive balance in this state for better part of two decades.
You know, in 2000, the private schools were able to join the WIA and the Public Schools Association at that point through an option.
And most of them, if not all of them did, and since that time, there has been a certain segment of the population of the association that felt that the private schools were winning a disproportionate number of championships in the state.
So we've had, now there's been two ad hoc committees that have looked at competitive balance.
One came back in 2014 and with not much change, they did a lot of research and decided what we had in place was, you know, the best that we could offer at the time.
Since then, we just had a competitive balance ad hoc committee look at the entire state.
They looked at other states, what models they are using, and came up with a competitive balance plan that uses a performance factor.
So we had a set of points for how well you did in the previous three seasons.
And with that, with four being a state championship, three being a runner-up, two being advanced to the semi-finals, and then one below that, sectional semi-finals.
That point value, if it matched six through three years, that they would be moved to a division of higher enrollments.
So that's sort of the performance factor portion of the competitive balance that was approved by the membership by almost a two to one vote back in April at the annual meeting, and will be applied following this year into next year's tournament.
So that's in a nutshell down what the competitive balance plan has to offer.
Who knew all this stuff goes on behind the scenes? You know, you go out to watch a football game.
I know they run some of the high school games down the not far from where I live. I can hear them at night at a Horlick Field.
Who knew this stuff went on that you guys have to keep your eye on all these details?
Yes, maybe that's the good thing that those that are able to go to these games and watch games don't need to worry about what goes on to make sure these opportunities are available for kids in the high school range.
I wouldn't say it detracts from the enjoyment of the game, but it's nice to know that these competitions are done and everything else is done behind the scenes.
You know, when in football, we had two high schools in the town I grew up with.
The older high school that was there since the beginning of time and the newer one is where I went to burner high school.
And the big thing was the matchup every year, Masspeq High School against burner high school.
And they alternated years of where they played the game with high school.
I am happy to say during my four years in high school, we won and beat Masspeq every single year, which was great because we were the new guys.
They say, do you go to Masspeq High School? I say, well, no, oh, you go to the other one. We were always the other one.
That's how they because they couldn't remember the name out for G burner high school. Oh, you go to the other one.
I understand, but we were happy to say and that was the biggest game. That was the game everybody had to attend.
And we all had our red on because that was the burner bison.
And we all had our red jerseys on and it was so much fun going after on a fall afternoon to watch them slaughter Masspeq High School.
And we won every year. And we didn't just win. We won big. So it was so much fun.
And you know, it's fun. You remember these games, whether it be basketball or whatever baseball.
I just went to a high school basketball game not too long ago. And I think where it was was distance from my house.
And so much fun to watch these games because the kids are playing to win.
There's no money involved. They don't have agents involved. They're just playing because they love doing it and they want to win.
And that's great. I love watching these games. And go ahead. No, no, you go ahead.
Well, I can mirror that. I enjoy just watching it. I would call it the purity of the game.
And you know, mistakes are made. You know, not everybody is shooting 100% and not everybody makes the field gold end of the game at to win it.
But again, it's the things they learn from these events and being with teammates and working through, you know,
the difficulties of a game with their teammates in groups. And you know, all that stuff that you learn that maybe isn't taught in the traditional classroom.
You know, I we have a lot of serious things to talk about. We will in the next half hour. But I got to tell you.
People who played high school football or high school basketball never forget the sport. I watched King of Queens a lot with Kevin James.
And he's always bringing up his high school sports days, high school football days. He had a big reunion of all the all his players on his high school team.
And he always remembered that big catch he made that won the championship for them. That was his big pride and joy.
And he has all the ex players there with the coach and everything. And they said, yeah, we remember this guy over here.
It's a different guy made that catch. It's a win a second. He didn't make the catch. I've got that. So he goes up to get his eight millimeter movie films out of the attic to prove.
He did make the catch. He was what what happened was he was wearing the wrong uniform number that day. And all they did was remember the number.
And it was. But everybody remembers their high school sports days. They never forget them. The big catch the big whatever they always remember that stuff. That's great.
Now here's some things we have to talk about the next half hour. The commentary alignment. We've got electronic seating. We've got lacrosse a new sport coming up in the spring.
The media advisory committee girls wrestling. There's something I never heard of before. And that's going to come up and Todd Clark from the WIA.
Is here with us this morning at WRJN, which we'll have high school football back in the fall. I say it doesn't start late August. So actually in the summer.
Yeah, I played it's definitely late August. There's two games and sometimes three before school starts. Yeah. So that's not really much of a summer for those people. They have to practice all summer long.
All right. Todd Clark coming back with us here at WRJN Radio. Cloudy today with a hundred forty three.
Chance of rain. Lowest thirty nine tonight. Rain like the tomorrow with a hundred forty five right now thirty seven degrees in cloudy.
At hometown radio refreshed civic media WRJN fourteen hundred AM ninety nine point nine FM and ninety eight point one FM stay there. Don't move.
Oh, yes.
Christmas time. Yeah, it's going to be cloudy today. It looks kind of winter. Yeah, there doesn't feel like it.
Highs near forty three degrees today. Chance of rain tonight. Lowest thirty nine tomorrow. Rain likely highs near forty five right now. Cloudy thirty seven degrees in
WRJN Radio. Todd Clark direct your communications for the Wisconsin intercollaristic athletic association. I get that right again.
I should write it down. Yeah. All right. I'm not too slow. Yeah. I'm slow. I give the older I get a little slower, but not that bad. We're talking high school sports.
Everything high school sports. You spent most of your adult left not all your adult life dealing with high school sports here in Wisconsin.
And it's greatly appreciated every parent in the state of Wisconsin appreciates it because one way or another,
the go to the games or have a child in the games. Let's talk about some of the other things on the list here.
I want to get to all of them here. Conference realignment. Did you have a change around a little bit, huh?
Yeah, a few years ago down, we noticed that there's also really some consternation that comes along with conference realignment and moving schools to different conferences.
You know, there's discussions about how there's going to be rivalries that will no longer exist. And you know, those types of discussions that went on.
However, the way we're doing it prior to this, I think that it left some questions as to how the process worked.
We came up with an idea the membership did and decided, you know, let's get a committee together, a task force together to review each one of the schools that want to leave their conference for whatever reason if it is a competitive thing or its geography or whatever the reason schools want to leave a conference.
As you can see with, you know, the NCAA, there's been a lot of movement over the last couple years in conferences.
And through the history of the WI, I think that's been something that has been something we wanted to keep to a minimum as much as possible.
But with declining enrollment at schools throughout the state, you know, at one time a school might have been twice as large as it was and it's fit in the conference.
And you move forward in time and they kind of grow apart as far as what they can offer as far as levels of programs and the competitiveness.
So there is that throughout the state each year.
And what we have done is have this task force look at conference realignment every two years so that this year it's every sport except football.
And then next year it will be just football only conference realignment because that's a different situation because not all teams in football make the playoffs like with every other sport.
There's 224 that qualify. So there's a little bit more emphasis on the football in those different every other years than every other sport that's going on right now.
Do you have the stat and I'm just spring in this on you? How many schools? How many high schools and now you do junior varsity too? So yeah? How many high schools in the state of Wisconsin?
515.
Oh wow.
515 schools.
And do they all have sports programs?
They all have sports programs at varying numbers. Some have as many as all the sports we have. Some just have one or two in those really small schools.
Maybe have a track program or basketball and a track program in a you know across country program that you only really need one individual.
But yeah, so every member has has sports to varying degrees of quantities.
Well, you had that right at the tip of your tongue. It's almost like you knew I was going to ask it. What's electronic seating? I don't even know what that is.
I know what seating is, but yeah, I know what seating is, but I don't know electronic seating.
Electronic seating is what we've used for football in the last four years now and really done what it is is a it's a real hybrid of an RPI that an RPI is the computer takes the amount of data, which you know we're talking about your win loss, your record against your opponent, your opponent's opponents records.
And it's you know it gets really deep into the weeds with it, but we have found that it is pretty accurate when using a computer we used to use the coaches that would get together in their groups and discuss who is the best who they believe was the best, but we had some discussions as to you know they went into these meetings prior to the start of our tournaments that they would different conferences felt they were stronger than other conferences.
And therefore would if they had more schools in that grouping could you know their vote would override any other conference for the quality seeds.
So we found that electronic seating is really taken that element away from it and really has looked at objective results during the season, which I think for now football and basketball is now using the electronic seating.
The sports you know more or less would either like to look at it further or are moving in that direction I think in the in the future.
Now in the spring you have a new sport coming about, which is not a new sport. It's been there for you know decades and decades and decades lacrosse.
Yes we voted bad in last year to both boys and girls across and replaced that season in the spring we will have our first state tournament series in June with the state tournament in
in Sun Prairie has been identified as the first site of this first state tournament on June 8th. So looking forward to that we have my lap count was 39 boys teams in the cross and 36 girls teams.
So they will compete for a state title in the first year of the sport would have been nice to have it in lacrosse.
Well you know it's something we haven't had and you know just having the city of lacrosse to have the first tournament.
It gets confusing the only way I can you know you know determine the difference when I see it and read it especially when we already have our track and field championships in lacrosse.
So from one week into the next week it'll go from the city to the sport you know the space and the capital C. I think it's the only way I can determine the difference and use it in context.
Now for people that don't know what lacrosse is back in the early 60s one of my neighbors the twins the bright twins say it's the name was bright.
They and they weren't too bright they used to play the cross and they were on their front lawn and it's a stick with a net on it and you have to catch the ball.
You can't do anything with your hands you got to catch the ball in the net and it's not a big net.
It's just enough to catch the ball and you're it's a really tough sport. It's not easy because everything's got to be done and you got to throw it in the net.
The end of this stick is the net. So it's it's not an easy sport. I used to watch those two guys practice on the front lawn. They were pretty good at it and I tried it once and I couldn't get I'm not very good at sports.
I'm very not coordinated but I'm glad that's coming around that's excellent girls wrestling.
I never I didn't do they had girls wrestling before what that is it new or is it just you just looking at it now.
Well girls have have been wrestling on boys teams for a number of years and in fact some of them have gone to be successful internationally with it.
But again sparsely based on the fact that they wrestled with and against boys that still takes place.
However, once the tournament series begins there is a separate individual tournament like the boys have an individual tournament then we bring them to the the Cole Center and three years ago we began a tournament series an individual tournament series for girls wrestling.
It was held in the cross that first year and we were looking at about 400 girls from around the state.
And then one year ago the second year wrestling it increased to about 750 girls.
So it's a sport on the rise and this year just talking with our associate director Mel Dahl who is responsible for wrestling indicates that we're up to 1200 girls now competing statewide.
And it seems to double each each year. So again that is probably just based on you know the newness of the sport our largest growing sport as far as participation.
Let's talk about basketball. We talk about football we talked about lacrosse talk about wrestling but basketball is so huge across the country and it's on right now.
So they're playing now high school basketball and it's a huge sport and it's just as big if not bigger than any other sport there is because a lot of players on the team and it's indoors.
So people you know the go outdoors in the elements to watch it and it's just a part of Wisconsin basketball.
What is and you know the state tournament for basketball both girls and the boys you know when I came to the office and I was able to attend these and work these events.
I described it as sort of the right of spring. It seems like whenever that that tournament is done we move into the spring season because that's always that the last tournaments of the winter season.
But again you know I look at the faces and those we had in ticket holders to come to that event they've been 60 years coming to that event.
You know so it's like a homecoming for so many people that every year there's one time they get together and it's at the boys and girls basketball tournaments.
Based on their you know they played with these the same people in high school they're friends they came to the tournament.
Maybe during high school right after high school and they've been continuing to come from all parts of the state meet in Madison and just have three days of basketball.
Personal story time when I was with my first station WGBB in New York we we decided we're going to have a basketball team amongst all the announcers and we were called the WGBB double drugglers and I don't know whose idea this was but if I ever find out there's going to be troubled they said we're going to play the students and gym teachers at different high schools on Long Island.
And I said are you crazy.
First of all where it's eight out of shape guys so we had we had six people on the court but only at two in reserve.
We're all out of shape there were some guys there in their fifties were they would change smoke and they're out there huffing and puffing.
I had asthma and a heart murmur so I was out there I was the tallest guy on the thing because I was about six five at the time.
But I can only run so much before I would be out of breath and I had to sit down and we lost every game but we just lose every game.
We lost every game with hardly scoring any points in every game.
So we did it for one season we had uniforms and everything but we were taking on gym teachers and students on the high school basketball teams.
What were they thinking they thought we get out the marketing I'm thinking that was the marketing department.
We didn't even have a marketing department we just had the bunch of stupid announcers who we just introduced rock and roll radio.
The thing was when we set up these teams we played these teams and I said we can't do this and they said oh we're just going to have fun.
They thought we're going to be like the Harlem Globetrotters out there having fun.
The Harlem Globetrotters have to rehearse a lot and the reason nobody takes on the Harlem Globetrotters in tries to mimic them is because they can't do it it's hard.
I mean you've got to be a super basketball player to play like the Harlem Globetrotters just to go for round.
So and we did that for one season and we're all we had guys who would go out into the locker room start smoking and then come back out again to the cigarette.
What's going on here folks anyway so that was one for a into into basketball I was on the was on the outdoor league I didn't play in high school basketball because I was doing too many of the things at the time.
But I was on the the outdoor league they called it during the summer and we used to play outdoors and it was kind of fun.
And you're playing it outdoor you know public parks and everything.
The basketball hoops were made of chains you know they weren't even nylon the basketball net right there with the change which is that all.
I know and you think that sometimes we get stuck in there and you had to get somebody to get a point to get it out.
Hey Todd Clark is just hanging there Todd from the WIA he's the director of communications more coming up at home town radio refresh WRG and sick media 1400 AM 99.9 and 98.1 FM don't move.
The number one song of the billboard hot 100 chart last week rocking around the Christmas tree by Brenda Lee it took 60.
65 years is it to get there 65 years she recorded that to 13 years old she's 68 years old now took 65 years to get the number one on the charts.
I guess when you wait all the things come Todd Clark is here from the Wisconsin into scholastic athletic association.
You know I got to tell you every day when he's taking my wife to work I used to pass for scene Lutheran high school.
And they started building in a gymnasium and I watched it from ground zero when they just plowed the field to building the gym to opening the gym to re-sodding the grass and putting up one of the goalposts.
I said one of the goalposts that used to be their football field and now.
They can practice there they have one goalpost but they got rid of their football field when they built a new gymnasium it's a good trade off I guess they got a brand new gym.
But I watched it all on the way and I wanted to call the high school and say what are you going to do with your football team we're going to play.
And I guess they play at different parks around town now but they got a brand new gymnasium out of it I watched the whole thing be built because every day I passed by I should have taken pictures of it.
Because I did that with when colders department store built their brand new building I was going to work every day and I stopped take a photograph of it every single day.
And I presented it presented I had a frame and I gave it to him and you can see the building being built step by step.
I did the same thing with a Marcus theater they were building every day I take a picture every day and then I you know these were actual photographs not a camera not a phone picture.
And I put it together and presented to him and they have it they actually you can see the building being built buildings torn down since so.
But anyway it was a movie theater they built.
Did they end up making a time lapse kind of video?
No that was a pretty cool video.
No they didn't but it was just something I gave to those little fun thing I saw every day so I just did I should have done it with the ever seen Lutheran school.
Let's talk about the reinstating of the media advisory committee what's that all about.
Well that's what I'm really excited about being in my role with the WIA we had a media advisory committee that started in the 1990s.
I came aboard in 2000 and we had a committee through about 2007 but because of some of the the nature of the committee and the discussions we were having and at that time there were a couple of litigation lawsuits involved.
We disbanded the media advisory we had one year where we brought in a media forum where we invited members of the media from all different media outlets to come in and we would talk WIA issues and any questions that they would have we could we could talk about.
And then we hadn't had anything until last year when we brought in various members of different types of media and when I look at the makeup of the types of media that we had.
Back in 2008 you know streaming you know just everything over the internet nothing broadcast.
We have companies now that are video streaming things that wasn't really that pertinent back in the early 2000s.
We added those types of members now on the advisory committee so now we can talk about the issues that the media have at our state tournaments and through the tournament series and answer any questions we have.
At the same time this past my first time back here this past year we talked about what was in the media advisory booklet that we have that you know sort of what media can expect when they come to their terms.
So I'm really excited to get that feedback from members of the media we're talking radio stations TV stations like I said the streaming and David daily newspapers weekly newspapers and photographers at those publications.
So it was great to have representation again from all the media outlets here in the office talk about the policies that we have.
Now I'm very happy to say civic media which owns the station and stations all around the state of Wisconsin at 19 radio stations around the state of Wisconsin.
They're bringing back high school football it's been gone.
Under the previous ownership for about nine years bringing it back and starting in the fall high school football Dick Ricefah and Peggy is producer Peggy Gricefah going to bring the games back on the air on the radio.
The WRJN which is great you can drive in your car now if you're out late you can listen to the games and it's going to be coming back in the fall or late August.
We you know late summer and we're going to bring them back to the radio again and that was just such a big part of this radio station for decades and decades with Gary sewer.
Remember Gary sewer. He used to call our call our high school games. Yeah. Either the Racine Raiders high school football and it was a big part of his life high school football.
As a matter of fact if you go to Horlick Field the press box is the Gary sewer press box over a door like me.
So it was it's a major part of our lives here. I'll tell you one quick funny story. So they change the way you brought game to broadcast today from remote locations are different.
But we just have something called a Marty system which was a link with a little mini transmitter and it was an antenna aimed at the station.
We had a duplicate antenna here and bring down to get a great signal. So we're over at case high school doing a game.
We couldn't get a good signal out so I brought the van over and I'm in the woods with the Marty unit because I had it was just it was a bad day for signals.
So I had to stay there away from the field and I used to the van the battery from the van to run everything.
And I was hungry so ordered a pizza because I was there for a couple of hours. We were there an hour before the game started.
And I told the pizza guy I'm in the woods. He said what do you mean you're in the woods. I said I'll meet you by the road about him in the woods.
I need you'll see the valve blink the headlights on the van. I'll meet you. And so he did I got a pizza.
I was sitting in the woods with the right outside Horlick field on the outside case high school. So hey, I wish you the best.
You're a great guy. You've been there. I've known you for many, many years Todd. He's a hard worker for the high school sports programs at your high schools and
even if you don't have a kid in school, it's still your high school and you support it. And the WIA, the Wisconsin Interstellastic
Association is there to help and you guys do a great job year round for all sports. And I thank you for it.
And we're glad to have high school football back on in the fall at WRJ and radio.
Looking forward to down and thanks for inviting me on this morning.
Oh, thank you, Todd. Todd, hang on a second. I just want to talk to you a second. Don't move. All right.
Be here tomorrow. And you know, last day before Christmas, got a big show tomorrow or rent of the shoe.
So be here at WRJ and hometown radio. Refreshed.
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