Wood reflects on 20 years of selfless service to PHS football

The 2016 Perry High School varsity football season ended Oct. 21. This marked the 20th season that I have worked on this sport for PEGASUS, the non-profit public access TV station found on channels 12 and 121-1 on the local Mediacom cable system.

Looking back, it makes me wonder where the time has gone. I have been covering this high school sporting event for longer than any of the players on the field have been alive. Where has the time gone?

The head coaches during this time included Todd Subbert, Mark Schilb, Brian Petersen, Jeff Hayes and Jason Olejniczak. Subbert also used to do the introductions for the Jayette and Bluejay home basketball games.

In the old high school gym, Subbert used to say, “Welcome to the Perry Sports Pavilion!”

I first started helping PEGASUS with Bluejay football games during the 1997 season. We only covered home games, and it took a large crew to set up, shoot and then tear down.

Back then, PEGASUS Coordinator Bob Dittert organized all of this. He had to have a crew of at least five people to start setting up around 5 p.m. for the varsity game, which began at 7:30.

It took at least six people to record a game. It was better if you had seven or eight people.

For the games we had two wired cameras on platforms as high up as possible in the plastic visitor bleachers on the north side of the field and one wireless camera down on the field with a tape in it.

We also had one person high up in the visiting bleachers, turning the wireless antenna receiver towards the ground camera, plus at least one announcer in the west window of the north press box and a director in the bottom of this press box, which was always Bob.

Running to where Bob was were the camera cables to a mixer. Bob could view each camera on the individual monitors and also see the view that you had selected to be recorded on a SVHS video tape recorder.

In editing you could also check the tape in the ground camera to see if there was a better angle. The sound from the announcers also came down to Bob through a cable. All of this was then recorded onto a SVHS tape. You had to switch these out at half time because they only held two hours of video in SP mode, and a game starting from pre-game to the end took about three hours of time. There was also a post-game interview with the coach in the locker room with the mobile ground camera.

We had wireless microphone and headphone sets in which we communicated with each other. Bob would then direct the camera operators and the person running the receiver for the ground camera.

I am sure that I will miss some people who helped with PEGASUS at that time. There was Coordinator Bob Dittert, the late Robert (Hector) Hethcot, Keith Knoll, who later became coordinator, Chris Gordon, John Tingwald, Matt and April Leber, Kevin Sayles, Jim VanDorn, Dan Brickner, Doug Grady and me, Doug Wood.

There were some other people who might have helped at one time or another, and I’m sorry if I have omitted anyone.

Everyone mentioned above, except the announcers, participated in set-up of the equipment. Bob always directed. Hector usually ran the ground camera. Jim helped out with various duties. Chris usually ran the ground camera receiver. Doug Grady always announced, and I know that Dan Brickner assisted him at times. Keith never worked during the games because he had to babysit his little nephew Schyler.

Matt and April usually did set-up but also helped during the games. John ran a camera on occasion. Kevin helped with various things, and he had to leave around 9 p.m. to be at his job at Iowa Public Television, which started at 10 p.m. in Johnston. For the tear down, the people operating the equipment performed this function and packed everything up to take back to PEGASUS Studios.

Chris Gordon, Kevin Sayles and Bob Dittert all had college degrees in communications and were well versed and experienced in organizing a television production.

I believe that during the 1997 season we covered four of the five home games. We did not cover the last home game because it rained. We had cables and electrical cords all over the place, and it would have been a huge hazard to have this out in the rain.

On Sept. 4, 1997, WOI channel 5 had an incident in which a mobile van had their van transmitter come into contact with power lines, severely injuring a camera man and a woman reporter. Bob was very worried about safety, so we did not do the final game of the season.

During the 1998 season, we covered all of the home games. I recorded the last game of the season by myself with one camera. No one but the announcers felt like doing that game.

Dan Brickner tossed the audio cable to me in the bleachers from the north press box so that I could have play by play for the game.

At that time PEGASUS programs were a big deal for the community. A lot of people in the community had cable and watched PEGASUS. Satellite television was starting to become a major competitor.

At one time, there was a satellite TV company in town called PEGASUS Satellite. We used to find a lot of calls on our answering machine from their subscribers calling about problems.

In December 1998, Bob moved to Texas, and in March 1999, he was married to Amber Dawn Fox. They met on the internet. A cyber romance. Some of you may remember seeing this wedding on PEGASUS.

For the 1999 season, there was no crew like Bob’s, and we were a far cry from having three angles, with one being on the ground.

Also in 1999, Pat Graney and Shawn Kenney let me be in the south press box with KDLS. I started to use KDLS play by play with the PEGASUS video for football.

I also started covering out-of-town football games. I had already been using KDLS audio regularly on basketball since the 1998-1999 away basketball season.

I am sure to also leave out some of the kind people who have put up with me from KDLS radio over the years during football. There were, of course, Shawn Kenny, Dan Brickner, Dean Haaland, Jim Gibbons, Jeff Webster, Kurt Whiton, Doug Stetzel, Eric Zamora, Cody Eichmeier, Aaron Kautzky and Stephen Flattery.

On some occasions, there were joint broadcasts with KDLS AM and the FM station from Jefferson. Jerry Roberts was a part of these broadcasts.

You do not encounter these joint broadcasts very often in these modern times. It is no longer possible to get all of the pre-game, interviews and commercial spots in for both stations during a game with a joint broadcast. Several other people may have assisted at a game on occasion. I see in some old game videos that Ned Menke and Sam Stetzel have been a part of some broadcasts for KDLS.

PEGASUS currently has copies of every football season going back to 2009. A number of years ago, some people threw away other seasons just to irritate me. I have copies of every game in a pile at home.

This ends part I of my telling of the 20th season of covering Perry Bluejay Football. Watch next week for the conclusion of this tale.