NHSCA Sports Hour Moves to Thursday Nights

by Jeff Fisher
Host, NHSCA Sports Hour

Beginning next Thursday, the NHSCA Sports Hour moves to its new night.

Starting July 21st, our one-hour weekly show will begin at 6PM EST on the Artist Radio Network.

To listen to past shows, please click here to go to our archives to download shows for FREE.

The Dean of Connecticut Boys Basketball on Sunday's NHSCA Sports Hour

by Jeff Fisher
Host, NHSCA Sports Hour

I just re-booked Vito Montelli, the 2011 National High School Coaches Association's Boys' Basketball Coach of the Year, on this Sunday's show.

Coach Montelli made a brief appearance on the June 26th show, but his interview had to be cut short due to time constraints, so I'm bringing him back this week to talk about his incredible career that puts him at the top of Connecticut's wins list.

Coach Montelli will be celebrating his 50th season on bench for the St. Joseph High School in Trumbull, Connecticut.  Montelli is the only coach that the school has ever had.

Last season, Montelli led the Cadets to their 10th state championship with a 79-53 win over Fairfield Prep in the Class LL title game.  The LL championship gave St. Joseph the distinction of being the only Connecticut school to win state championships in all four classifications.

Montelli's record is 853-329.  He'staken his teams to 16 state championship games.

Coach Montelli will be on Sunday's NHSCA Sports Hour around 6:40 PM EST.

Click here to listen to the show LIVE

July 10th NHSCA Sports Hour Now Available On-Demand

by Jeff Fisher
Host, NHSCA Sports Hour

If you missed Sunday's show with 2011 NHSCA Girls' Tennis Coach of the Year Anita Murphy of Lewiston High School in Maine and Patrick Fisher of SportsMeasures and the Athletic Character Survey, you can now listen at your leisure on-demand.

Click here to listen to the show for FREE.

NHSCA Sports Hour Show Topic: Texas 7-on-7 High School Football Championships

by Jeff Fisher
Host, NHSCA Sports Hour

We all know how much Texas loves its football...and with the growth of 7-on-7 passing tournaments, it's easier for fans to get their fix outside of the fall.

This weekend at Texas A&M in College Station, 128-teams from across the state will battle for championships in two divisions.  Division I is made-up of Class 5A and 4A schools, while Division II comprises Class 1A through 3A.

The action gets started tomorrow and wraps-up with the championship on Saturday.

Then on Sunday, Doug Stephens, executive director of the tournament will join me as a guest on the NHSCA Sports Hour to talk about this huge event that is entering its 14th year.

Defending 2010 Division champ Lake Travis is back to defend its title, while Division II champ Brownwood is also back looking for a repeate.  No team in either division has ever won back-to-back titles since the competition began in 1998.

Here's a list of the former champs, plus a look at the qualifiers in each division:

7-on-7 Champs


2010 - Lake Travis (Division I), Brownwood (Division II)
2009 - Round Rock Stony Point (Division I), Celina (Division II)
2008 - Richland (Division I), Crane (Division II)
2007 - Georgetown (Division I), Celina (Division II)
2006 - Colleyville Heritage
2005 - Baytown Lee
2004 - Tyler Lee
2003 - Odesaa Permian
2002 - Katy Cinco Ranch
2001 - Baytown Lee
2000 - Celina
1999 - North Mesquite
1998 - Southlake Carroll

Below is an alphabetic list of qualifiers:

Division I (Class 5A & 4A)

Abilene
Abilene Cooper
Arlington
Arlington Bowie
Arlington Lamar
Austin Bowie
Belton
Beaumont West Brook
Buda Hays
Carrollton Creekview
Cedar Park Vista Ridge
Channelview
College Station Consolidated
Coppell
Crowley North
Cy Fair
Cy Falls
Dallas Jesuit
DeSoto
Duncanville
Edinburg
El Paso Coronado
El Paso Franklin
El Paso Riverside
Fort Bend Elkins
Fort Worth Paschal
Friendswood
Houston Chavez
Houston Lamar
Houston Stratford
Jersey Village
John Tyler
Katy
Katy Cinco Rank
Keller Center
Klein Forest
Klein Oak
Klein Woods
Lake Dallas
Lake Travis
La Marque
Langham Creek
Lewisville Hebron
Mesquite
Midlothian
Montgomery
Pasadena Dobie
Pearland
Plano
Plano West
Rockwall
Rockwall Heath
Rosenburg Terry
Round Rock McNeil
Round Rock Westwood
San Antonio Alamo Heights
San Antonio Johnson
The Woodlands
Tomball
Tyler Lee
Weslaco
Wichita Falls
Willis
Wolfforth Friendship

Division II (Class 3A, 2A & 1A)

Abilene Wylie
Academy
Alpine
Altair Rice
Anahuac
Argyle
Aubrey
Austin St. Andrews
Ballinger
Bandera
Bangs
Beaumont Kelly
Boyd
Brownwood
Burnet
Cameron
Celina
Clifton
Comanche
Crockett
Decatur
East Bernard
Eastland
Edna
Fort Stockton
Gatesville
Gilmer
Glen Rose
Godley
Graham
Hitchcock
Houston Kinkaid
Ingleside
Iraan
Kaufman
Lago Vista
La Villa
Lexington
Liberty
Lindale
Lorena
Marion
Mathis
Melissa
Merkel
Navasota
Pettus
Princeton
Prosper
Rockdale
Salado
Sanger
Seminole
Somerset
Sonora
Taft
Turkey Valley
Tyler Chapel Hill
Vanderbilt Industrial
Waco Reicher
Wellington
West Orange
Whitney
Wimberly

Click here to listen to the show LIVE Sunday starting at 6 PM EST.

Click here to to to the State 7-on-7 website to follow along with all of the action.

2010-11 High School Sports Season in Review

by Jeff Fisher
Host, NHSCA Sports Hour

The 2010-11 school year was loaded with all kinds of high school sports stories and accomplishments across this great nation.

A lot of those stories and accomplishments you heard about on the NHSCA Sports Hour through interviews with the coaches and players that were involved.

I thought I’d take a little time to look back over this past year with a highlight of the highlights!!

Let’s start with our Febuary 13th show when Leta Andrews, girls’ basketball coach at Granbury High School in Texas, became America’s all-time wins leader as a head basketball coach.

Andrews set the record in early December when her team beat Midloathian for her 1,334th career victory.  She passed Robert Hughes of Fort Worth Dunbar in Texas, who previous held the record with 1,333 career victories.

Speaking of basketball greats on the NHSCA Sports Hour, a week later on Show #288 we had two more legendary coaches on the same show when Bob Hurley of St. Anthony High School in Jersey City joined us along with Jack Curran of Archbishop Molloy in New York City.

Between the two of them, they’ve been coaching high school basketball at their respective schools for a combined 90-plus years.

Coach Hurley and his Friars won another “mythical” national championship this past season, while he also won his 1000th game in February.  Coach Curran, who is 80-years young, still coaches baseball along with his basketball duties.  He’s America’s winningest coach with 2,500 victories between the two sports.

Moving on to football, the 2010 season was another incredible one with many great team and individual performances.

South Panola, won its 9th Mississippi state championship and that helped the Tigers claim MaxPreps.com’s and USA Today’s “mythical” national championships.

Hamilton High School in Arizona finished #5 in the USA Today poll after winning its third straight state title.  Head coach Steve Belles joined us on the April 10th show to talk about his program’s 40 straight victories heading into the 2011 season, plus he talked about his team’s big 2012 game when Hamilton will play Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks, California in Dublin, Ireland.

When it comes to win streaks, West Rowan High School in North Carolina will enter the 2011 season with the longest active win streak.  West Rowan won its third straight 3-A title in December, closing the season with a 46-game win streak.

On May 1st, we talked with Rocco Casullo, the new head coach at St. Thomas Aquinas in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  Casullo talked about taking over for the legendary George Smith, who resigned earlier this year.

Smith was named the 2011 NHSCA Football coach of the Year after amassing a record of 361-66.  ESPNRise and the National Prep Poll named Smith’s Raiders the 2010 “mythical” national champs.

My favorite football story came on January 23rd when we spoke with Chance Anthony of Breckridge County High School in Kentucky after he was named the High School Rudy Award winner.

Anthony joined Trish Hoffman and me to talk about playing high school football and basketball with only one-and-a-half arms.  Anthony was born without the lower part of his right arm, but that didn’t stop him from being a two-way starter on the football team.  He even caught a couple of touchdown passes this past season.

Speaking of inspirational…you need to go back to listen to the December 5th show with University High School (San Francisco, CA) girls’ cross country coach Jim Tracy and his top runner Holland Reynolds.

Reynolds told an incredible story of how she crawled across the finish line to win another state title for her coach, who is battling Lou Gehrig’s Disease.  Tracy is the 2011 NHSCA Girls’ Cross Country Coach of the Year.

We had plenty of great wrestling stories and interviews during the past school year.

How about Bobby DeBerry of Sunnyside High School in Arizona, whose program has won a national record 314 straight matches. You can listen to DeBerry talk about his incredible program by going to the archives and clicking on show #288 on February 20th.

Then there was the great interview with Hope Steffensen of Kenai High School in Alaska.  Hope became only the second girl to ever win a state wrestling championship in a boy’s tournament.

Steffensen joined us on the January 30th show to talk about winning in a man’s world.

That was contrasted with our February 27th show when we spoke with Sean Keeler a sports writer in Des Moines, Iowa who talked about a top-ranked wrestler named Joel Northrup, who refused to wrestle a girl.  Northup forfeited to Cassy Herkelman in the first round of the state championships.  By forfeiting, Northrup, who was seeded fifth, gave-up all hopes of a coveted Iowa state title.

In Minnesota, Destin McCauley of Apple Valley won his 5th state championship.  McCauley, who’s an Olympic hopeful, has been wrestling in state championships since 7th grade, which is allowed in Minnesota. McCauley appeared on our March 13th show.

McCauley’s team was ranked as the top team in America by WIN Magazine.

Another wrestling shout-out goes to Blake Rouolo of Matoaca High School in Virginia, who became only the second wrestling in America to win four straight NHSCA National Wrestling Championships. Blake was our 2011 Wrestler of the Year.

Our final wrestling story comes from Hollywood when director/writer Tom McCarthy joined us on March 27th to discuss his movie Win Win that was based on the sport of high school wrestling.   A week later, Alex Shaffer (Hunterdon Central HS, Flemington, NJ), the teenage star of the movie talked with us about the change from being a New Jersey state wrestling champ to an actor.

There were several great baseball stories this past year.

At the top of the list was Tim Hopley and the Portsmouth High.  The Clippers won their fourth straight New Hampshire state championship, plus set a national record with 83 straight victories. Hopley appeared on the April 17th show.

On May 1st, we spoke with Eric Lay of tiny Maxwell High School in California.   Lay had the pleasure of watching pitcher Steven Perry pitch four-straight no-hitters.  Perry and his teammate Tyler Wells combined to throw a total of 11 no-no’s this year.

There were plenty of high schoolers drafted by Major League Baseball last month.

We talked with two of the higher draft picks…Dylan Bundy of Owasso High School in Oklahoma, who was taken #4 by the Baltimore Orioles and Bubba Starling of Gardner-Edgerton in Kansas, who was selected #5 by the Kansas City Royals.

Archie Bradley of Broken Arrow High in Oklahoma was taken #7 by the Arizona Diamondbacks. We spoke with his coach, Shannon Dobson, about Archie and his team winning Oklahoma’s 6A state title.

And we wrap-up with a great story in girls’ tennis.  Tiny Cindy Duan of Sanford School in Delaware became a five-team tennis champ in the spring.  Duan, who will go to Princeton University in the fall, finished a perfect 83-0 during her high school career.  Cindy, who’s only 5-3, 105 pounds appeared on the June 19th show.

In all, the NHSCA Sports Hour touched 34 states, covering 17 different sports.

There were plenty of other great stories and interviews along the way, and you can go to our archives and listen to everyone of them.

To everyone that participated in the show, thanks!

To all of our listeners we’re so happy you tune-in each week, and we look forward to an even better 2011-12 season!!

2011 NHSCA Girls' Tennis Coach of the Year Anita Murphy on Today's NHSCA Sports Hour

by Jeff Fisher
Host, NHSCA Sports Hour

Hope everyone enjoyed the July 4th holiday!

The NHSCA Sports Hour returns with a LIVE, fresh show today at 6PM EST after our families enjoyed the week off with their families.

Joining me on today's show will be Anita Murphy of Lewiston High School in Maine.  Murphy is the 2011 National High School Coaches Association's Girls' Tennis Coach of the Year.

Murphy, who has spent 33 years as a girls' tennis coach, led Lewiston to its sixth straight Maine Class A state championship last season.  Her overall record is 404-58.

Also on the show will be Patrick Fisher, Founder of Sports Measures.

Fisher, no relation to me, but anyone with a last name of Fisher is good in my book, will talk about his character assessment service for athletes.

We'll wrap-up the show with a look back at some of the highlights of the 2010-11 school year in sports.

Click here to listen to the show LIVE starting at 6 PM EST.

NYC Public High School League Negotiating A $500,000 TV Contract

by Jeff Fisher
Host, NHSCA Sports Hour

How big is high school sports becoming?

Just look to New York City for your answer.

There's an Associated Press story that I found on the Wall Street Journal's website that is reporting that the MSG Varsity Network, owned by Cablevision, is negotiating a two-year, $500,000 television deal to broadcast Public Schools Athletic League games.

MSG Varsity was started in 2009 and is dedicated to covering high school sports in the New York region.

Click here to read the AP story.

NHSCA Sports Hour Takes July 4th Holiday Off

Happy 4th of July everyone!!

We'll be taking tomorrow off to spend time with our friends and family, so the Artist First Radio Network will be playing a "best of" show tomorrow at 6PM EST.

We will return with a new show on Sunday, July 10th.

Stay cool!!

Jeff & Trish