For the past four years there has been an entity whose loyalty to Trojan sports rivals that of the band, the cheerleaders, and even the most devout Superfans. Rain or shine, WDGC sports radio under the direction of Philip Vainikos has made it to every home and playoff football game, a plethora of home and away basketball games, and even a few baseball games.
The announcing team of Philip Vainikos and Dan Morrill has developed a professional sound perfected over three years of yelling “Trojans win!” together. In an attempt to improve the quality of their broadcasts Phil and Dan conduct extensive pre-game research, informative pre-game, in-game and post-game interviews, and produced segments. One such produced segment, “Full Court Press,” allowed listeners to familiarize themselves with the senior basketball players through entertaining personal interviews. Folks were able to learn that Kam Norton’s favorite’s video game is Super Smash Brothers, and Tommy Benton would like to have lightning shoot from his fingertips if he had a super power.
Not surprisingly, this commitment to radio excellence requires a huge time commitment. Not only do the games themselves take up a lot of time, but Phil and Dan allow up to two hours for pre game research, and two more hours to set up the broadcast equipment. They were a self-sufficient radio behemoth; Phil and Dan learned all the technical aspects of broadcasting on top of announcing skills. Now, after three years of perfecting the technical logistics to optimum efficiency, Phil is in the process of re-writing the manual for all the sports radio equipment. All TV/Radio technical crews now follow a system that Phil and Dan grounded as a standard.
As these two legendary announcers move on in their lives, they leave the WDGC sports radio program with trained successors. Phil and Dan have trained two new rookies, Scott Boulter and Shane Gustafson, to continue broadcasting at the same professional level with an expectation that Scott and Shane will strive to improve the program. However bright the future looks for WDGC sports radio, it was without a doubt a tearful event during the remote “White Out” broadcast from York HS when Phil and Dan (pictured above) signed off for the last time saying “from WDGC, this is Philip Vainikos and Dan Morrill saying thank you and goodnight.”
