chesterton girls basketball coach candy wilson to handle radio color analyst duties for saturday morning's 1a state championship game

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

This being the 50th year of the IHSAA girls basketball tournament, those assigning announcers to the four state title games scheduled for Saturday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse wanted to make sure a female voice handled the color analyst duties in each game.
To appreciate how respected first-year Chesterton girls basketball coach Candy Wilson is in the basketball crazed state, consider that hers was one of the voices selected.
Wilson will work alongside play-by-play man John Herrick as color analyst for the radio broadcast of the 1A final that pits Lafayette Central (25-4) vs. Borden (22-5). It tips at 9:30 CT and will be aired on WJOB (1230 AM/104.7 FM) out of Hammond and WEFM (95.9) out of Michigan City.
“I’m not stressed about it,” Wilson said. “It’s basketball. I can talk and talk and talk and talk.”
Wilson, who ranks 10th among active Indiana girls basketball coaches in victories with a 418-213 record built at Boone Grove, Valpo and Chesterton, her alma mater, said she considered it an honor to be asked.
“Oh my gosh, yes,” Wilson said. “Anything like that that puts Chesterton on the map more, that’s why I do it. Any time we can get our name out there more and gets us on the map more gets our kids more opportunities.”
In the past, Wilson has served as an assistant coach for the Indiana All-Stars and the Indiana Junior All-Stars. She said she has had the headphones on for four televised games, but this is her first experience at doing it on radio.
“You have to make it so people listening understand what’s going on in the game,” she said. “That’s what I have to remember. It’s not TV, it’s radio. I have to give them a picture.”
A Purdue graduate, Wilson said her favorite sportscasters to listen to through the years have been the late Howard Cosell, former Valpo High and Purdue star Robbie Hummel, and gold medalist/three-time Naismith Award winner and Naismith Hall of Fame and Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Cheryl Miller.
“I love her voice, love her voice. I love to hear her announce,” Wilson said, then pointed at herself. “This voice, I’m not sure.”
Herrick called her to go over what he likes out of the color analyst.
“He said people will get excited when they watch a game and will talk over him, and that makes it hard for people on the other side (listeners) because it’s not like TV where they’re watching, so he wants me to pause before I interject,” Wilson said. “He also wanted me to be versed on the other games because we’ll have time to talk about them at halftime.”
To that end, Wilson watched game video of the teams that made it to state but won’t be able to do during the broadcast what she did when scouting the teams. She won’t have the authority to tell the players to freeze in their tracks and wait to resume playing until she puts to paper all the X’s, O’s, arrows, solid, squiggly and dotted lines of a particularly intriguing play she would like to steal for future use.