Mike Stern . . . Back on the Texas Trail

Mike Stern . . . Back on the Texas Trail

Mike Stern

The good Lord wanted me to be on a high school football sideline, after all.

Hurtling past my 56th birthday (for which I give thanks), I have recaptured the magical sensation of watching and reporting on the hard-hitting and elusive gridiron achievements of dedicated and disciplined student athletes who play football.

I once patrolled the sidelines of Philadelphia Public League matchups on behalf of my high school paper (Olney ’73), as a stringer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the old Bulletin, and began my full time writing career by making the jump from the Temple U. campus to the BuxMont and Inter-County circuits as a member of Lansdale-based The (North Penn) Reporter. Then it was off to the Dallas, Texas metroplex where the Friday night lights shine for schools based in Big D, Arlington and Fort Worth. There, I shared press box space with tobacco chewing and snuff dipping coaches as a correspondent for the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Life is so interesting and ironic – the more things change, the more they stay the same. On the other side of becoming an English teacher and raising a son with my since departed better half, Ilene (cancer in 2009), I have returned to the gridiron as a sideline reporter for Arlington, Texas-based Time Warner Cable Sports. I have traded in the pen, notepad and stat sheet of the late-1970’s and early-1980’s for a high tech wireless microphone and earpiece of the New Millennium.

When Time Warner Cable play-by-play man Pete Stein, from his lofty perch in the press box high atop the cathedrals they call football stadiums intones “let’s go to the sidelines and Mike Stern” and the cameraman’s light blinks red, I launch into an informative but impassioned 20-30 second segment providing the viewer with a perspective gained from no less than 30 feet from the action, or from where a coach has just verbally relit his players’ pilot lights.

I may report on a specific player, a given unit (“the offensive line is simply exploding off their blocks”), the dew from the humid field that is causing a pigskin to be slippery, or informing the audience that they should “not call them water boys or water girls, but refer to them as H2o technicians.” I am so pumped with enthusiasm that I usually punctuate the end of each report (after the camera has returned to the on field action) by jerking my right arm backward in the manner of an umpire calling a third strike. I have even been known to do “The Berney” (off camera) in a salute to contemporary youth’s musical tastes.

Director Rob Davis gives me the freedom to choose the mood – humorous, whimsical, serious, analytical, etc. – and the message (sports, academics, personalities, player-coach relationships, etc.). I’ve known Davis for about 15 years – our sons played baseball together or as rivals from Little League through their senior seasons at Plano Senior High School. We also worked together in the high school press box, where I did the Public Address announcing.

Last year, he asked me to work two playoff games. Once I realized how much I’d missed the pulsating bands juxtaposed with the hard-hitting, explosive and lightning quick action on the field, I was all in for this season.

Despite living in north Texas, however, my thoughts are never far from where my I began covering high school football. It may be 2011 and I may be telling the story of a game at attractive scholastic venues such as Kincaide Stadium (south Dallas), Pizza Hut Park (Frisco), Eagle Stadium (DeSoto), Standridge Stadium (Carrollton) or even the behemoth, world-class showplace known as Cowboys Stadium (Arlington).

But I can still see, hear, smell, touch and taste the history of timeless plots of gridiron surrounded by working class neighborhoods, homes and backyards at locations like 10th and Bigler, Front and Duncannon, Rowland and Ryan, Cottman and Algon, Large and Dyre, and 48th and Locust. (That latter location was the flashpoint for a novel – Inner City Fields of Fire -- that I wrote and self-published, a domestic terrorism tale with some references to sports whose key locale is in the shadow of the old West Philadelphia High building).

And I can recall covering some future NFL players such as Tim Lewis (Pennridge) and Steve Bono (Norristown), as well as coaching luminaries like Jim Algeo (Lansdale Catholic), Mike Pettine Sr. (Central Bucks West), Ralph Ricapito (Mastbaum), Al Angelo (Frankford), and Wayne Helman (Pennridge). (I also covered a pretty decent Souderton Area lefthanded pitcher by the name of Jamie Moyer).

Needless to say, I frequently share stories of my experiences covering football at these storied venues with anyone in Texas who will listen.

In a sense, it’s a long way from the inner city and suburban football fields of eastern Pennsylvania to the stadia where standout student-athletes in north Texas run the sweep, hurl spirals into the night air and sprint 50 yards to make a TD-saving tackle from behind.

I can honestly says that both locales have combined to give me a unique perspective on football, as well as the youngsters and coaches who make the sport what it is today. But while my life as a teacher and a broadcaster have me firmly planted in north Texas, my heart is never far from my roots of Philadelphia and its suburbs when it comes to scholastic football.