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[All in a Day’s Work] Terry Ficorelli: The New Voice of the Saginaw Spirit
by Nancy Sajdak Manning
>- Photo by: Avram Golden
Terry “Fic” Ficorelli, new play-by-play announcer for the OHL (Ontario Hockey League) Saginaw Spirit hockey team, has called professional hockey games for over three decades. Ficorelli’s a rare breed of person who identified his love of hockey and life’s work when he was just a child.
Play-by-play broadcasters like Ficorelli report sporting events with a voiceover that describes details of the action of the game. They are often assisted by a color commentator and sideline reporter. Ficorelli, however, has always broadcast his games solo.
The Detroit native graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s degree in television/radio and minors in English, journalism, history, and political science. As a freshman in 1973, he played baseball and hockey, and also called games for the MSU varsity hockey team. His first professional effort was calling games for the Muskegon Mohawks. He then moved to the IHL Kalamazoo Wings, the AHL Adirondack Red Wings, the AHL Baltimore Skipjacks, and the IHL Cincinnati Cyclones. Prior to joining the Spirit team, Fic spent nearly 13 years (1995-2007) with the UHL Muskegon Fury.
He has won multiple announcing and other awards during his career and has been behind the microphone for eight professional championship games. As of November 29, 2007, he had broadcast 3,064 consecutive professional hockey games and never missed one. “Knock on wood,” he told me in our phone interview. I did. Now living in Saginaw Township, Ficorelli has never married. He says, “I’m accused of being married to the game.”
Terry, how did you become interested in hockey broadcasting?
What I remember most is the first time my father ever took me to a Detroit Red Wings hockey game, when they played at the old Olympia in Detroit. I was just a little kid. It was probably the most exciting event—the most exciting thing that had ever happened in my life.
[At about age 9 or 10], I’d find a nook or cranny in our old colonial home, and I would really sequester myself from the rest of the family. Whatever sport was in season, I would sit there and create two fictitious teams. I would just talk out loud, doing an imaginary play-by-play. My father, an electrical engineer by trade, relented and bought me my first microphone when I was in grade school. He attached it to a television speaker system so I could watch games on TV and do the play-by-plays.
Did you have play-by-play mentors?
When I was growing up, I listened to Budd Lynch and Bruce Martyn, the Red Wings’ radio broadcasters, Danny Gallivan, who was the Montreal Canadiens’ TV broadcaster, and Foster and Bill Hewitt, the father and son combination who did the Toronto Maple Leaf games.
What main responsibilities do you have as an announcer?
The biggest responsibility you have as a broadcaster is to your listenership, and you need to be well-prepared. I set forth a goal of reaching those who are not physically present at the game itself to make them mentally present so that they can—through the theater of the mind, through the word pictures that describe it, through the play-by-play of the game—the listenership can close their eyes and really visualize everything that is transpiring on the ice.
What’s the best part of broadcasting for you?
I can feel my energy and my adrenaline absolutely flow through the veins of my body when we get close to game time—just the crowd growing in numbers as they assemble in the stands, the teams coming out on the ice for the warm-ups, and the music playing.
The most challenging part(s)?
I ‘ve learned that the business that I’m in not only teaches one humility but at times teaches one humiliation. . .. I’ve seen a lot of my contemporaries leave the business because of the travel— long seasons can involve seven or eight months.