“At a basketball practice in December 2016, our daughter Marissa went down with a knee injury,” said Kevin Meiring, father of the Fort Loramie High School senior.
“The diagnosis of ACL and meniscus tears was devastating to hear because Marissa had begun her freshman year so strong.”
But as ScoresBroadcast.com shares with its large listening audiences to each and every webcast of high school sports, “In six months, thanks to Wilson Health Sports Medicine, Marissa was healthy and back in the game.”
Wilson Health Sports Medicine (WHSM) “success stories,” as they are termed by the free, online play-by-play service, began in late 2010 soon after Wilson Memorial Hospital Sports Medicine was conceived. Today, the popular services provided by WHSM offer physicians, athletic trainers and physical therapists, who are specially-trained to deal with injuries unique to student athletes.
“Wilson athletic trainer Ryan Castle played a major role in Marissa’s full recovery,” stated Betsy, Marissa’s mother. “He was there supporting her every step of the way — from her injury, to the assessment, to successful surgery, through rehab, and all the way to her full recovery.”
Just as Wilson Health helped Marissa overcome a major obstacle in her high school hoops career, ScoresBroadcast.com benefited from the Wilson Health partnership 10 years ago, when it was faced with the challenge to respond to the need for “expanded” coverage of high school sports.
“That was an important stretch of time just a few years after our inception,” said Jack Kramer, who had freelanced with Jeff Bray on the local radio station before it broke five decades of tradition and cut high school sports programming.
“Jack and I launched on a lark in 2006 and 2007, well ahead of the curve. We couldn’t even spell ‘Innernet,’” recalled Jeff. “We filled a void right away, and slowly but surely listeners discovered the online technology worked. But they wanted more.”
The timing of the Wilson Health partnership then assisted ScoresBroadcast in its new growth which included weeknight and Saturday afternoon webcasts of girls high school basketball.
SCORES, the Shelby County Online Radio Entertainment System, is, of course, online this month with high school tournament basketball and is likely to produce its 1,500th webcast of local high school sports at the girls state tourney. WHSM is highlighted in a lengthy segment during halftime of every webcast.
“I’ll never forget the day when Dr. Heckler gave us the diagnosis of Marissa’s injury. She was in tears, but we all had full confidence in him,” said Betsy in the SCORES audio infomercial. “He handed her a box of Kleenex and said, ‘It’s going to be okay. I’m going to get you fixed up, and we’ll get you back on the court.’”
Marissa responded. After a solid sophomore season, she excelled as a junior and was named Shelby County Athletic League player of the year. She was honored as an all-Southwest district first team member last year and second team member this year.
Meiring’s senior leadership, 16 total points, and 9-of-11 shooting from the free-throw line paced Fort Loramie to a hard-earned district championship over Franklin-Monroe last Saturday.
One of the more than 2,000 listeners to that key tourney game on SCORES was Roger Detrick, who has spent 38 years at Lacal Equipment in Jackson Center, including the last 16 as president.
“SCORES and its coverage of our superb academic and athletic programs in Shelby County and the region add to our quality of life,” stated Detrick. “The hearts of parents and grandparents are filled with joy when SCORES highlights their kids who excel in class and on the court.”
Lacal is a SCORES founding sponsor and is in its 15th calendar year supporting a portion of each webcast that recognizes cheerleaders and players, their grade point averages, favorite school subjects, extracurricular activities, and possible college and career choices. Lacal also sponsors college scholarship programs at a couple Shelby County high schools.
Detrick said his brother-in-law and sister-in-law can’t get to the county games nearly as often as they would like. But he remarked that they and thousands of others are thankful that SCORES is “the radio on your phone for high schools sports.”
“Chuck McBee and I have a passion for what we do. We love it,” said Kramer. “We couldn’t have gotten off the ground without the support of Lacal. It gave us the jump-start we needed.”
“Lacal came to Jackson Center in 1982 from LA, California, thus the name Lacal,” added Kramer. “It’s one of numerous unique industries in the upper Miami Valley that help make the area a great place in which to live, work, raise families, and receive an education.”
The firm manufactures quality replacement parts for road and highway maintenance equipment used by communities and contractors all over the United States and around the world.
Like Kramer, Detrick noted that he, too, craves high school sports. He laughed when he said his only claim to fame at Jackson Center was guarding Houston’s Amos Johns in 1962 and “holding him” to 36 points.
Mary Lee Smock, Lacal’s vice president and chief financial officer, played volleyball and basketball at Botkins and was an outstanding volleyball performer at Wilmington College.
“Jack and Chuck are professional and so complimentary of our student athletes,” she said. “They are also dependable. We listeners count on them, night after night after night.”
Counting on additional business and industry for participation, SCORES sought assistance from American Architectural Glass, Inc., (AAG) in Clayton within 18 months after Lacal’s partnership kicked off the play-by-play service. Owner Jim Moore of Fort Loramie was supportive. And so were Jason and Crissy Meyer, also of Fort Loramie, who bought the business in 2010 and moved it to Fort Loramie six years later.
“We are fortunate to have such a wide variety of firms on board with us,” Kramer said. “It’s so much fun to invent creative audio messages that spotlight AAG and its many, major, precision glazing projects.”
SCORES is currently developing fresh audio for AAG that spotlights its highly praised work on the $35-million FC Cincinnati soccer training facility in Milford.
AAG installed 14,000 square feet of exterior aluminum framing and glass, and also installed 10,000 square feet of interior glazing including a variety of mirrors and custom glass. The project prompted the Major League Soccer commissioner to comment that the work was “absolutely spectacular.”
Last year, AAG completed a major project at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, the home of the Buckeyes. A large portion of the B Deck was renovated and converted into club suites, requiring the installation of a 500-foot long sliding glass and aluminum framing system.
“It’s the goal of SCORES to finish the pre-production and finished production of the fresh AAG message ASAP. This one is going to be a slam dunk,” said Kramer. “As the state basketball tourney continues and the state championship gets closer and closer, our online audience gets larger and larger.”
During every single year of its 15-year existence, SCORES has followed at least one or two area sports teams to the State Final Four: in baseball—Fort Loramie, Minster and Russia; in football—Anna, Fort Loramie, Lehman Catholic and Minster; in volleyball—Fort Loramie, Jackson Center, Lehman Catholic and New Bremen; in boys basketball—Anna, Houston, Jackson Center and New Knoxville; and in girls basketball—Anna, Fort Loramie, Jackson Center, Minster, and Versailles.
Quite a few teams are still alive this week as the boys tourney enters district play and the girls tourney enters regional play. In fact, SCORES webcasts at least seven contests from Wednesday through this Saturday. It covered 10 last week in five days.
The live, online service is available at no charge to listeners, and completed audio streams of games are archived for listening pleasure at anytime — all thanks to support from area business and industry who have helped to sustain SCORES through nearly 1500 webcasts.
