Former Blue Devil basketball star become football radio voice

Jon Boyce was denied a chance to play football for Lebanon High School.

But a radio interview while starring on the basketball court for the Blue Devils set the wheels in motion for the 2003 LHS-graduate to be named radio play-by-play voice earlier this month by WANT/WCOR owner/general manager Susie James.

Boyce, a longtime announcer for Cumberland men’s and women’s basketball, will leave his post as studio host for the postgame Scoreboard Show for the pressbox at Clifton Tribble Field/Danny Watkins Field, replacing announcer Tommy Bryan, who retired from that role at the end of last season.

James also announced Joe Gardner is being moved upstairs from the sideline, where he worked the past 18 seasons, to serve as the color analyst after Bob Lea stepped down from that role. Donald Gann, who took over for statistician Terry Stafford two years ago, will remain in that position when LHS football, likely the oldest continuously running Lebanon-based radio series, begins what is believed to be its 75th season over the airwaves this fall.

“Tommy’s a big domino,” Boyce said. “When he fell it kind of set a lot of things in motion. Talking about big shoes to fill, Tommy’s the best to do it.

“It’s a bit intimidating, to be honest, to be stepping into it because I remember Tommy when I was still playing… But it’s reassuring to know that I have their support and I got some guys with Joe and Donald, those guys have been around. Joe’s as intertwined with it as he can be… He’s going to be a massive asset to the broadcast. I’m really looking forward to getting to know him personally and, of course, working with him.”

“I’m excited to introduce our new football broadcast crew, which comprises seasoned sports radio announcers who carry on the tradition of all being LHS alumni,” James said in a release. “When I met with coaches and radio staff and discussed the changes with listeners, I laid out goals for forming a new crew. One, we wanted a crew that loved Lebanon High School. Second, a crew that will provide knowledgeable, positive coverage for all involved. Finally, as always, that will represent WANT/WCOR professionally. We have experienced this over the last three decades, and I am confident this newly formed crew will carry on with that tradition. From the first time we gathered, I could tell these guys would work together beautifully to achieve the same goals.

“We will take the expertise and experience of the past crew and add a few new ideas.”

Boyce follows in the path established by Jack Hendrickson in 1951 and followed by Clyde Harville, Bruce Skeen and Bryan as well as a few fill-ins for a season or game here and there. Though Boyce never played football, he scored over 1,100 points as the No. 1 option for Coach Randall Hutto’s basketball Blue Devils in 1999-2003. Back then, basketball was also carried on WANT/WCOR and Boyce was once interviewed by Harville before a game.

“Clyde Harville is one of the reasons I wanted to get into broadcasting to begin with,” Boyce said Monday. “I was a junior in high school and he called me up to interview me live on the radio before the guys’ basketball game started. I just remember how much I loved it. I never got a chance to work with him. Sadly, he passed just a couple of years before I started at the station, so I never really got an opportunity to thank him.

“It’s a full-circle moment for me.”

Boyce said he might have played football. When Bobby Brown came to Lebanon in 2001, he asked Hutto about letting Boyce, a lanky 6-foot-3 left-handed post with 3-point range, play that sport.

“Hutto told him no before I ever got asked,” Boyce said. “I didn’t find out about it for like a month.

“I always loved football. I remember watching football with my dad growing up. My mom told me stories about me being really, really little when I would see my dad coming home, I would run to the bedroom and turn on any football game that I could find and greet him at the door and tell him ‘I got the game on’. It didn’t matter what the game was. So I never put on the pads myself. But I’ve been watching and cheering my whole life.”

Interestingly, one of Boyce’s early partners in his 18-year broadcast career was Hutto. When boosters got enough sponsors to get LHS basketball back on the air following Harville’s 2006 death, Boyce and Hutto alternated doing play-by-play and color between the girls’ and boys’ games. Hutto, then working in the Lebanon Special Schools District office, eventually ran successfully for Wilson County mayor. Boyce transitioned over to Cumberland basketball by whatever audio means was available, primarily livestream, before WANT/WCOR resumed carrying the Phoenix’s Mid-South Conference games the past couple of seasons. He’s also worked as a DJ in addition to postgame football.

While he’ll give up the postgame studio show, he plans to continue calling Cumberland basketball.

“Good Lord willing,” Boyce said. “Luckily, those don’t cross over.”

Gardner, who followed Lea as the sideline reporter when the former Blue Devil quarterback moved upstairs as Bryan moved from color to play-by-play in 2007, is a 1992 LHS grad where he played for Coach Mark Medley. He spent seven seasons as an assistant and then head coach at Walter J. Baird Middle School. He had the closest view of watching his two sons play under the Friday night lights.

Gann, also an LHS graduate, may leave behind the longest-lasting legacy with his work. The numbers he compiles, like Stafford before him for nearly four decades and even Raymond Lasater prior to that, become the official statistical record for Blue Devil football.

Boyce said Gardner is not likely to be replaced on the sideline, leaving the broadcast with a three-man crew. He cited technical problems experienced during road games.

“At home it worked well having him down there, a big luxury,” Boyce said. “A lot of high school broadcasts don’t have that. With being on the road for half the games, it seemed with most of those, it just wouldn’t work properly. We decided to just cut that position for now and concentrate on the three-man crew.”

And now, the new centerpiece of the crew will get to be at a game all the way to the finish.

“For so many years, if I went to a football game, I only got to stay there for maybe a quarter,” Boyce said. “I usually had to head out for the studio in time to get everything done I needed to do.

“It’s going to be fun to be there for the entire season there at the game.”

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