News-Press from Fort Myers, Florida • Page 39

MAY 14, 1989 7B i.i hwikwimi lanwmww wt mhwmimwi WEVO's Cannington sets a frantiic pace locally By GLENN MILLER News-Press Staff Writer Mike Cannington, en route to a high school game, throws the 15-pound camera on one shoulder and lugs the 20-pound recording unit with his free hand. His 3-year-old son, Eric, doesn't carry anything. You might be surprised, but his day starts early and ends late. Cannington, a 1980 University of South Florida graduate, reports to work this day early in the afternoon. At 2:30, he's typing scripts on a Remington Rand electric typewriter in his small office he calls The Cave.

The office is bigger than a bread box, but not much. On one wall, behind him, are sports posters Michael Jordan, Pete Incaviglia and others. On the wall above his typewriter are two Hooters calendars. Four unopened packs of McDonald's ketchup sit on a counter. Television scripts are written in only the middle two inches of an 8-by-ll'2 sheet of paper, which is fed into a TelePrompter.

At 3:20, Cannington writes a basketball script he'll read on then-No. 1 Duke's loss to North Carolina the previous night. At 3:50, WEVU's other sports reporter, John Curtis, walks into The Cave. Curtis is preparing a story on veteran major-league baseball player Ray Knight. "Can you get a Ray Knight freeze?" Cannington asks Curtis.

A freeze is a photo that will appear on screen above an anchor's shoulder as he reads a script. At 4 p.m., Cannington walks into the editing room to put together the 5 o'clock show. "This is the essence of what we do," Cannington says. then he goes on the air. At 5:35, Cannington tapes a promotional short for the 1 1 p.m.

show. The day is half over. "Now, the fun begins," Cannington says. Cannington picks up a camera, throws it in the back of a WEVU station wagon and leaves the office. He heads to his nearby home, picks up his 3-year-old son, Eric, sends the baby-sitter home and father and son go out for pepperoni pizza.

At 7:30, the Canningtons, father and son, arrive at Estero High for a basketball game. "OK, slick, you ready?" Mike says to Eric. Papa Cannington throws the 15-pound camera on one shoulder and lugs the 20-pound recording unit with his free hand. Eric doesn't carry anything. Everybody seems to know Cannington.

At the restaurant, the father and grandfather of Fort Myers High basketball player Jeff Ma-goon come to Cannington's table. Moments before the game, Cannington, lugging his equipment, greets the Estero and Fort Myers coaches. During pregame warm-ups, Fort Myers' Lashay Walker stops shooting and visits with Cannington. The game tips off at 7:40. Eric sits in the third row of bleachers, a bit frightened by the noise.

His father stands courtside, taping the game. By the end of the first quarter, Fort Myers leads 22-6. At 8:20, Cannington drops Eric off at home with his wife. Eric wants his father to stay. "Don't go to work," Eric pleads.

But daddy has to go. You know the show must go on. 4 By 8:30, Cannington is in the office, checking the Associated Press news wire. At 9, he edits tape of the Estero-Fort Myers game. He rolls the tape looking for an exciting play by Fort Myers junior Otis Griff in.

"All I care about is getting that dunk from Otis," Cannington says. He finds the dunk. The next hour and a half roars by writing scripts, answering the telephone, giving scores to the technical department to be flashed on the screen, editing tape. At 10:25, he separates carbon copies of the script in the studio. White goes to the TelePrompter operator.

Pink goes to the news producer. Green goes to the director. Blue goes to the audio department. Cannington keeps the yellow. At 10:44, Cannington tries to identify No.

10 on Estero's basketball team. There's not a No. 10 listed in Estero's program. "The unknown Wildcat, I'll call him," Cannington says. Sure enough, during the show, Cannington refers to No.

10 as "the unknown Wildcat." At 1 1:30, the show ends. The news people gather in the studio, rehashing the show. Cannington goes to an editing room and plays back the tape, looking for flaws. About 1 1:45, the studio empties. Cannington, Curtis, Elke, Bruington and several technical staffers head to a nearby bar to talk shop.

Seventeen minutes to air time. Mike Can-nington sits in an editing room, leans over a tape machine and pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Out in the WEVU studio, anchors Kate Bruington and Ron EIke deliver the news. Cannington looks for a satellite feed of Miami Heat highlights. Times a-wasting.

The Heat will lead WEVU's sportscast this night. At 11:14, eight minutes to air time, Heat highlights move. At 11:15 Cannington transfers the satellite feed into a WEVU tape machine. Seven minutes to air time and Cannington works the dials and buttons of the tape machine. By 11:20 the "sportscast is ready.

Cannington isn't. Two minutes remaining. Cannington runs across the concrete studio floor to the master control room with a sports tape as WEVU weatherman Jack Church delivers the tides and forecast. Church's seven minutes are nearly up. It's almost time for Cannington's four minutes.

At 11:20 plus some seconds, Bruington and Elke alert viewers of Cannington's upcoming sports segment. WEVU breaks for a commercial. Cannington isn't in the studio. He's putting on makeup. At 11:21, Cannington sits down at the sports anchor's desk and picks up the scripts for the night's stories.

At 11:21 and 30 seconds or so, Cannington adjusts his microphone and buttons his jacket. At 1 1 :2 1 and about 50 seconds, the director yells, "Stand By!" Cannington pulls his seat up, adjusts his posture. It's 11:22: Cannington is on the air with highlights of the Heat's loss to the Chicago Bulls. Ah, just another day at the office for Cannington, WEVU's sports director. Taking into account his two appearances on the 5 p.m.

and 11 p.m. reports and occasional promos, Cannington is on the air about eight minutes a day. If he works an eight-hour day, what does he do with all his spare time? TeleViSiQn From page 1B v. yyr? Lmm News-Press file photos will talk about that," said Hammes, who added, "You can have a great scoop, but they remember the sports challenge." Four years into his sportscasting career, Hammes realizes he isn't polished and is still learning his trade. "My real strengths are being able to cover the whole spectrum," Hammes said.

"I can be goofy and I can do- a commentary on Deion Sanders. IZ5 can satisfy a lot of different peopled and I'm human and I make mistakes. A weakness might be not being able to find my style, my signature. "I'm still trying to find my way of delivering sports I'm still menting." '2 Ukee Washington, left, Craig Sager, middle, and Gene Lavanchy as they appeared during their stints in Southwest Florida. WEVU's Cannington "I always said when I was there I had the greatestjobinthe world.

When I did a game down there I tried to make it as interesting as I do now when I do a World Series game." CRAIG SAGER Ex-WINK sports anchor Old faces in bigger places Ex-area sportscasters dot nation's top markets By GLENN MILLER News-Press Staff Writer Southwest Florida isn't a destination for television sports anchors. It's a proving ground. If a sports anchor can cut it here, the big-time is a stop or two up the road. It's happened before and it'll likely happen again. TBS sports host Craig Sager worked at WINK in the 1970s.

Ukee Washington left WBBH two years ago for KYW in Philadelphia, the nation's fourth-largest television market. Late last year, Gene Lavanchy just 24 left WBBH for WLNE in Providence, R.I., the No. 42 market. Walt Gray left WINK for Miami, and is now in Sacramento, Calif. "I've been blessed," said Lavanchy, whose hometown, Walpole, is a 30-minute drive from Providence.

Sager, Washington and Lavanchy learned their trade and honed their skills in Southwest Florida. They came raw and untested and left professionals, sought after by television stations in larger markets. Sager had never worked in television sports before coming to Southwest Florida. His job before signing with WINK in 1976 was as a television weatherman in Tampa, then the No. 18 market in the country.

At the time Sager moved south, the Fort Myers area was No. 2 1 2. Sager, however, preferred wins and losses to highs and lows. He went to work in Fort Myers and when Sager goes to work, he stays a long time. "They said Craig Sager invented the 18-hour work day," Sager said.

"No, I inherited it from my father." Sager put his work ethic to use learning Southwest Florida sports. When Sager arrived in 1976, he said, "I have to get to know people around here so I can give them their local news." Although he was criticized at the time for over-emphasizing local sports, Sager still believes that's the way to go. "Maybe it's glamorous to sit back and take highlights off the bird (satellite), but it's more important for you to be at the local golf tournament," Sager said. Sager made friends here in the 1970s who have remained friends through the 1980s. When Fort Myers High football coach Sam Sirianni was roasted last winter, Sager emceed the event.

Cypress Lake High basket- covered the Super Bowl, he stayed home while Hammes covered Florida State and its All-America cor-nerback, Deion Sanders, an alumnus of North Fort Myers High School, in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. "We don't worry about what the other two guys do," Tomasch said. "We didn't feel the Sugar Bowl was anything big." WBBH's Hammes Hammes has heard the wisecracks before. Things like he belongs in a shirt advertisement because of his good looks. "Blond-haired, blue-eyed sports-casters 25 (years old) are a dime a dozen," Hammes said.

Despite the comments, Hammes, a native of South Bend, and graduate of Butler University, knows looks are also a plus in the television business. "If I was put in a microwave would I have this job? Probably not," Hammes said. "Over time you have people look past your double-breasted suit, golden locks and blue eyes." When Hammes started school at Butler he didn't know the television business was in his future. "I thought I'd be in retail," Hammes said. "I thought I'd be selling clothes." Following graduation from Butler in 1985, Hammes went to work in Elkhart, Ind.

He came here last year as weekend sports anchor and became sports director when Gene Lavanchy left WBBH for Providence, R.I. Unlike the ambitious Tomasch at WINK, Hammes doesn't have any hurry-up timetables. "The goal of mine is to be happy," Hammes said. "I want to be in a community where I earn respect. Some sportscasters want to work 10 markets in 10 years I'd like to be here a while This is a stepping-stone market.

I'm real happy right now." At WBBH, viewers see a personality first and a journalist second with Hammes. He and Severson dress in Superman costumes to promote their weekly sports challenge, where they, inevitably, lose more often than the Miami Heat and with more variety. Hammes and Severson have lost In football, basketball, nerf basketball, horseshoes, target shooting (at targets, presumably, not each other) with a .357 Magnum, bowling, golf, miniature golf and racquetball. The Men of Steel have won five times. "We have not gotten to shuffle-board," Hammes said.

"Give us time." Hammes defends the sports challenge. "More than anything else, people person's sex life. Cannington couldn't let that pass. "Doctor, I'm going to run around the block," Cannington said on the air after the segment. "Tell my wife I'm coming home." Humor and fun are essential elements of sportscasting for all three anchors.

"I look at it from the simple average sports fan's point of view," Ham-mes said. "I want it to be entertaining." "I guess there's a fine line between having fun, being funny and being a clown," Tomasch said. "I want people to look to me for what they need to know in sports and have fun." News judgment Is not a science. One sportscaster's hot story is anoth-, er's ho-hummer. Tomasch, Hammes and Cannington don't always agree on the day's top story.

These differences in their shows are to be expected because they come to work with different backgrounds. WINK'S Tomasch Tomasch, 24, is a young man in a hurry. "I want to be at a network by the time I'm 30," Tomasch said. He's making all the right moves. Tomasch, a graduate of Tampa's Jefferson High School, was graduated from the University of Florida in May 1987.

The next month he started at WCTV in Tallahassee, where he worked for seven and a half months. At the age of 22, WCTV sent Tomasch to the Fiesta Bowl for a week to cover Florida State. He left No. 126 Tallahassee for No. 98 Southwest Florida last year.

In November, he was promoted to sports director and signed a three-year contract. "I've squeezed a lot in," Tomasch said. Tomasch would like to squeeze in a stint in Gainesville: "My dream job is to be the (play-by-play) voice of the Gators." Tomasch said. Tomasch's visions of sportscasting fame began at an early age. "I used to watch Monday Night Football when I was a kid and I'd say, 'That's me someday, Tomasch said.

First thing's first. He's only six months into his three-year contract at WINK and is still learning. When Tomasch came to WINK, his news director, John Emmert, explained the area to his new sports reporter people here are active. Sure, they watch sports, but they also participate. Like his competitors at WBBH and WEVU, Tomasch delivers a heavy menu of local sports.

Tomasch, however, said he isn't influenced or concerned by Hammes and Cannington. Although Tomasch game. When WBBH's Ukee Washington showed up at an event, he was often a bigger event than the game he covered. Washington was that rarest of public figures well known and revered. Washington, 30, believes relating to the community is a Fort Myers sports anchor's most important function.

"Show an interest," Washington said. Washington was asked for the most important lessons he picked up during his five-and-a-half-year apprenticeship at WBBH. "Probably how to budget my time and how to describe the pictures on the screen," Washington said. The contrast in working conditions between Fort Myers and Philadelphia is vivid. In Fort Myers, a sports anchor often lugs a camera to a game, tapes the action, lugs the camera back to the station, edits the tape and then puts it on the air.

It's not done that way in the big city. "I can't touch the equipment because of (union) rules," Washington said. What's next for Washington, who's almost reached the top of his profession? "The only place I think I'd go would be a network," Washington said. Lavanchy's goal is more modest than moving to a network. "I guess my ultimate goal is to get into the Boston market," Lavanchy said.

At a young age, Lavanchy has moved from Southwest Florida, which is barren of big-time sports teams, to New England, which has everything major-league baseball, NFL, NBA, NHL, and NCAA football and basketball. Last fall, Lavanchy covered the major-league baseball playoffs. Lavanchy, despite now spending time in Fenway Park and Boston Garden, treasures his two years in small-time Fort Myers. "Absolutely," Lavanchy said. "I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I went down there, it was my first time away from home and I made some great friends." Like Sager and Washington before him, Lavanchy proved himself. Cannington's been in South west Florida longer than Hammes and 2 Tomasch combined, is older and-" has less hair than either. Cannington, 30, has been at WEVU five years, the last two and a half in sports. He came to WEVU as a jjj news reporter from a station id. Shreveport, La.

Sports is done a bit differently af WEVU than the other two For starters, WEVU's sports staff is'' 33 percent smaller than the other two stations. WEVU has a two-man sports operation while the other stations have three sports reporters. "I feel for Mike," said Tomasch. Cannington has a strong high school slant to his shows. "On a Tuesday or Friday (in basketball season) you know you'll see me in a high school gym," Cannington, a University of South Florida graduate, said while working in the WEVU office.

"This is a job. It's like work. It's not digging ditches or shingling roofs. I like to work. Sports happens in the fields and in the gyms, not this station, not this office." Cannington, who, like Tomasch, grew up in Tampa but atttended King High School, not Jefferson has a conservative approach to his show.

"People don't want to see me doing sports," Cannington said. "They want to see Michael Jordan dunking or Mike Schmidt hitting a home run." 1 Although Cannington grew up in Florida, he'd like to move on to an area with big-time sports, especially basketball. Cannington's ideal next job will position him in Atlanta or in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Working at CNN or ESPN as anchor of their half-hour sports news shows also interests Cannington. "Oh, God, I'd love to do that," Cannington said.

"I love the idea of doinga half-hour show." In the meantime, Cannington is doing four-minute shows in Fort ball coach Terry Thimlar stays with Sager on trips to Atlanta. Sager made friends, not money, in Fort Myers. "People used to tell me, 'Buy land, buy Sager said. "I said, 'I can't afford to pay Sager couldn't become a land baron on the 1 5,000 or so he made a year. The $25 a game he picked up doing radio broadcasts of high school events certainly wasn't enough to launch a real estate tycoon.

Three years after arriving at WINK, Sager left, thanks in part to Whitey Herzog, then manager of the Kansas City Royals. Sager's work habits covering the Royals when they held spring training at Terry Park impressed Herzog. If Herzog said he'd be available for an 8 a.m. interview, Sager made it a point to be at Terry Park at 7:30. When a sports job opened at Kansas City's KMBC, Herzog plugged a young, eager kid in Fort Myers.

"Whitey said, 'Hey, get this guy from Fort Myers. Hire said Sager, recalling Herzog's pitch. From KMBC, Sager went to work at CNN as a sports anchor for 64 years. From there, he became TBS's host for NBA basketball, SEC football, a new show called U.S. Olympic Gold, the Goodwill Games and All-Star Saturday.

He's come a long way from Cypress Lake-Fort Myers high school football games. "I always said when I was there I had the greatest job in the world," Sager said. "When I did a game down there I tried to make it as interesting as I do now when I do a World Series U.S. team must settle for 1-1 tie after allowing late goal Qualifying games A recap of the United States' games in the World Cup qualifying series, following Saturday's 1-1 tie with. Trinidad and Tobago: Date (Opponent) Result Score April 16 (at Costa Rica) 0-1 April 30 (Costa Rica) 1-0 Saturday (TrlnidadTob.) 1-1 Ramos, who scored the Americans' goal in the win over Costa Rica, lofted a high pass directly in front of the net.

Trittschuh controlled the ball, feinted a shot, then boomed the ball past goalie Earl Carter from about 1 2 yards. The United States is in CONCACAF regional qualifying with Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Trinidad. At the end of the double round-robin, in which all teams play each other home and away, the two teams with the best records will advance to the 24-team World Cup. Elsewhere Fan violence during and after an English soccer game Saturday in London resulted in 25 arrests and 16 people being hospitalized for minor injuries, shattering a month of calm following the Sheffield stadium tragedy. Rival fans from Birmingham and host Crystal Palace clashed on the field early in the game, resulting in 17 arrests.

Another eight people were arrested following the contest when they vandalized buses parked near the stadium, police said. Hospital officials said one fan was stabbed, but none of the injuries was serious. The incident was the first significant case of crowd violence in England since 95 fans died when they were. crushed against an anti-hooligan fence at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield April 1 5. Birmingham fans climbed a low fence Saturday and rushed onto the field in the game's 12th minute as Crystal Palace was scoring its first goal.

They were confronted by Crystal Palace supporters and fought on the field, officials said. The second-division game at Selhurst Park in southeastern London was stopped immediately. Referee Mike Bodenham ordered the players off the field as seven mounted police restored order. The game, halted as some of the injured fans were taken off the field on stretchers to waiting ambulances, was restarted after a 27 -minute delay and ended in a 4-1 Crystal Palace victory. ---I 1 still have a long way to go," he said.

"We lacked tactical discipline. But we showed more composure than in the past." The American team seemed to slow down its offense, particularly after Trittschuh's goal put it ahead. Instead of attacking, the Americans used a slow tempo, trying to move the ball around the perimeter and they got few good shots. Trittschuh's goal came in the 48th minute and neither team seriously threatened until Charles broke loose behind the U.S. defense with time running out.

After taking a pass from Clayton Morris, Charles sprinted past the American defenders, then beat Vanole on a high blast into the center of the net from 20 yards. Vanole, who stopped a penalty shot by Costa Rica to preserve a 1-0 victory April 30, played well and had little chance to stop Charles on the breakaway. The goal by Trittschuh, a former Southern Illinois University player, came off an assist by Tab Ramos. 1 By The Associated Press TORRANCE, Calif. Goalie David Van-ole, the hero of the recent victory over Costa Rica, could not lift the U.S.

soccer team to another win. It wasn't his fault. Vanole gave up a goal with two minutes left Saturday as Trinidad QflPPFR and Tobago tied the oUUuEll heavily favored Americans 1-1 in World Cup soccer qualifying. "It happened so fast," said Vanole of the goal by Trinidad's Hutson Charles in the 88th minute. "I don't know how they got the ball to him so fast.

I just blew it." Steve Trittschuh scored the only goal for the Americans, 1-1-1 in the round-robin regional qualifying for next year's World Cup in Italy. Trittschuh was one of the defenders, ho w-ever, who was burned on the tying goal. "We kind of had a letdown," he said. "I don't know why, we weren't tired, but I could feel us letting down." U.S. Coach Bob Gansler, obviously disappointed with the outcome, tried to be positive about the contest.

"We showed some improvement but we.