Local couple achieves a career milestone in broadcasting

MOSES LAKE - Long-time Moses Lake residents, Mel and Vicki Olson, have accomplished a feat that seems impossible to reach these days as this season marks the 50th year the couple has been broadcasting Moses Lake High School sports.

During the past half-century, the Olson's have been on the air for every league, district, regional and playoff game both home and away for football and basketball, as well as all wrestling matches including the Mat Classic State Tournament.

Mel and Vicki first took an interest in broadcasting when Mel was a teacher and the wrestling and football coach at Chief Moses Junior High School.

"Back in 62' I had announced a national ski tournament and some local track meets as well. I was also the color commentator for the guy who was broadcasting Moses Lake football," Mel said. "When he left the station ... it was KSEM back then (KBSN now) I thought my broadcasting career was over. Then I got a call from the station manager the next fall. He asked me if I wanted to broadcast the football and basketball games. I told him I'd never done it before, but I'd give it a try."

Mel thought the job would only last until they found a permanent replacement. But after the football season was over, he was asked to broadcast wrestling because Moses Lake was winning state tournament after state tournament.

"I told him I don't think you can broadcast wrestling," Mel said. "I thought to myself, 'how would you do it?'"

He has been broadcasting the sport ever since.

Mel stopped coaching in 1976 because it was starting to interfere with his broadcasting. It was the same year that local legend Ron Seibel stopped coaching wrestling at Frontier Junior High School to take the helm of the high school wrestling program.

"There were a lot of matches then ... very few tournaments. It was almost all dual matches on Tuesdays and Thursday's," Mel said. "So I had a broadcast somewhere ... both home or on the road. Friday and Saturday's I broadcasted basketball."

Vicki said Mel was the first person to broadcast high school wrestling.

The following season, another broadcaster took up the sport in Sunnyside, and the next year, in Othello. But they haven't continued.

"We are the only high school wrestling broadcasters now in the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest," Mel said. "We don't know of anyone else in the country doing it either. When we were back at the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma, we asked the pit guy there if he knew of anyone broadcasting high school or collegiate wrestling. He said he didn't know of any."

Mel went on to become a member of the Washington State Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame

His fondest broadcast memory was a wrestling match involving state champion Chris Dexter from Moses Lake.

"It took place at Central Washington University about 45 years or so ago during Dick Dean's tenure as head wresting coach at Moses Lake High School," Mel said. "He had lost to a kid from Richland a couple times during the year and ended up facing him for the state championship. Dexter was behind in the third round, but tied the match to send it into overtime, then went on to win it. We had tapped the match and it's still in the WIAA achieves today."

Despite all the recognition he's received over the years, Mel said he couldn't have done it without Vicki's help.

"She provides me with all the information regarding who is wrestling who on what mat," he said. "She really shines during the bigger tournaments and at the Mat Classic State tournament because I don't have time to keep track of everything that's going on."

During the 50 years spent in the booth, the Olson's have never missed a match or a game, and have never been late for a broadcast.

Mel, (84,) and Vicki, (85,) have been married 63 years. The two were living half a state apart from each other when they met just after graduating high school in 1947; he from Yakima High (now Davis), and she from Whidbey High in Oak Harbor.

"Mel was from Yakima County and I was from Island County," Vicki said. "We were asked to go to the American Red Cross swimming instructor school in Tacoma. When we got there, the girls and boys were put in separate dorms. First thing the very next morning, I heard this bugle that work me up and I asked my friend, 'My gosh, what's that?'"

Her friend replied, "Revelry, ya got to get up and get down to breakfast."

"So after we ate, we all had to go to a meeting," Vicki said. "Then Mel walked in the room, and I said to my friend, who's that guy? And she said, "Oh, that's the guy who blows that darn bugle every morning.'"

After the meeting was over, the group was separated into a canoe class. That's then Mel stood up and said he needed a partner.

Vicki was quick to reply.

"I jumped up right away and said 'I'll be your partner."'

As they were walking down to the water, Mel asked Vicki if she'd ever been in a canoe before?

"I didn't say anything because I was born and raised on fishing boats and thought it couldn't be hard to paddle a canoe," Vicki said. "After we got in, Mel said I wasn't sitting right and proceeded to tell me how to sit. And after we started paddling, he told me I wasn't doing that right either. So he showed me how to paddle, then said, 'Are you sure you've never been in a canoe?' About that time I was getting pretty irritable, so I turned around and said, 'Why don't you just paddle your end and I'll paddle mine.'"

Mel said they've had that understanding for the last 60 years.

At the end of the camp, Vicki enrolled at Western Washington University, and Mel at Washington State University.

But they remained in contact. Two years later (1949), Mel and Vicki married.

They moved to Moses Lake in 1955. Mel began coaching wrestling and football soon thereafter.

Over the years, the two have done nearly everything together.

"We took up scuba diving, then got into water skiing and competed for 30 years," Mel said. "Then we started snow skiing together. I was a member of the ski patrol on Mission Ridge for 35 years."

Mel and Vicki decided to get out of water skiing because they wanted to stop competing, but they still wanted to be out on the water.

So they purchased sailboat with the goal of enjoying some relaxation.

"Well that didn't last long," Mel said. "We entered a sailboat race the first week we had the boat and ended up winning two national championships over the years."

About the only thing the two didn't do together was bowl.

"I didn't bowl because I didn't like getting beat," Mel said. "But Vicki was an exceptional bowler. She bowled in 22 national tournaments. We have over 300 trophies in the garage, and most of them are hers."

Vicki is a member of the Washington State Women's Bowling Hall of Fame and the Moses Lake Women's Bowling Association.

She was also the editor and writer for the Washington Pin Fall Press, which received national recognition for being the top small bowling publication in the country.

"I was honored by the National Women's Bowling Writers of America in 1995," Vicki said. "I put the paper together in 1987, did all the writing, took all the pictures, and took it to the publisher at A&H Printers here in Moses Lake. They printed it and I did all the mailing."

Mel and Vicki sold their sailboat four years ago. Now, the only outside interest Mel has other than broadcasting, is bicycling.

"I'm kind of a nut on that," he said. "I compete world-wide in a journal category and recently finished seventh out of 43,000 riders. I logged in 17,000 miles last year, but only 13,000 this year, so I am way behind because the weather has been bad."

As for Vicki, besides trying to "keep Mel in line," she is just trying to enjoy some down time.

"I gave up bowling because my doctor kept telling me I needed to slow down, so that's what I am trying to do," she said. "But I do like to shop and travel every chance we get."

Mel and Vicki have two daughters, Pam and Jan, five grandsons and six great-grandchildren.

"Pam graduated from Washington State University with a degree in zoology and worked for Exxon," Vicki said of her daughter. "But she paints now, has done a lot of art work, and has her own studio. We have a lot of her paintings hanging around the house. Jan teaches special education in Richland."

When asked what their secret to marital longevity was and how they could spend so much time together without getting on each other's nerves, Vicki replied, "He paddles his end of the canoe and I paddle mine."