Mike Hartsock retiring after four decades at WHIO

Phyliss and her husband David Hartsock, who died in 2014, played a big role in their son becoming one of the legends of Dayton media in part by making TV news a part of Mike’s day when he was a kid. He’ll retire at 65 with that routine still a part of his mom’s day.

“I grew up watching Channel 7,” Hartsock said. “We’d come home from school and sit down and eat dinner, and Don Wayne and Jim Baldridge and Ed Krahling and all those people would be on TV, so we would watch it.”

Generations of Miami Valley residents have watched Hartsock. He covered the Cincinnati Bengals both times they reached the Super Bowl. He was there in Oakland when the Cincinnati Reds won the World Series in 1990. He has traveled to every Dayton Flyers’ NCAA tournament game and called play by play for hundreds of UD games over the years.

Hartsock has befriended the likes of Anthony Munoz and Anthony Grant, the latter of whom interned with Hartsock for two summers when he was a student at the University of Dayton 30 years before he became the Dayton Flyers head coach.

“I would go out with the camera crews and do live shots,” Grant said, “and other times Mike and Mick Hubert allowed me to kind of shadow them as they put the sports show together. I got to do some editing and really hang out behind the scenes. That was fun.”

Then and now, Grant saw Hartsock as a thorough reporter who was easy to talk to.

“Mike is somewhat of an icon just in terms of what he’s been able to mean to this program over the course of his career,” Grant said, “and I know coach (Don) Donoher always spoke very highly of him.”

Hartsock, who was inducted into the Dayton Area Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2015, graduated from Waynesville High School and Eastern Kentucky University. He started his career with a radio station, WPFB in Middletown, in 1977. He moved to WHIO Radio in 1979 and then to the TV side in 1981. The following year, he became a full-time sports reporter.

Hartsock started as the weekend sports anchor, while Hubert was sports director. Hubert became the voice of the Florida Gators in 1989 and remains in that job. Hartsock took over his position and has held it ever since.

Over the years, Hartsock has become close friends with many of his fellow local sports broadcasters, including Jack Pohl and Hutch Konerman, of WDTN-TV.

“Mike had all the things you need to be a legendary sportscaster, starting with longevity,” Pohl said, “but beyond that, he had a catchphrase whether he realized it or not — ‘Stay right there’ — and people loved that about him. He was there for all the big events and was the play-by-play voice of the Flyers and did all sorts of things. He was at every single golf outing you could imagine and normally won. He was very much in the tapestry of Miami Valley sports. He was someone we all and still do respect very much.”

Hartsock enjoyed covering Jim and John Paxson and Keith Byars and numerous other local athletes who went on to big things after leaving Dayton, and while the famous events he has covered may stand out the most, he has a soft spot for high school athletics.

“I’m going to miss being on the sidelines on Friday nights during football games,” Hartsock said. “I’m going to miss being in a sweaty gym underneath the basket shooting highlights. It’s one thing to cover professional athletes and college athletes because they all kind of expect coverage because of where they are playing or who they are, but high school kids don’t expect coverage and they get such a kick out of being on TV. I still get that today. I’ve covered athletes and their grandkids, and I think I’m almost to great grandkids with certain people.”

Two people Hartsock has covered for decades, Grant and Dayton football coach Rick Chamberlin, paid tribute to his career earlier this month during a media session at UD Arena. While Hartsock was filming the UD men’s basketball team practicing, Grant and Chamberlin approached him to hand him jerseys with his name and the No. 7 on the back.

It was an emotional moment for Hartsock, and his last broadcast will be emotional as well. However, he said he’s picking the perfect time to go. The only problem is he can’t use all the time he’s going to have soon to visit his daughter Jessica and his grandson Alex because they live in Canada and the border isn’t open because of the coronavirus pandemic.

That pandemic, however, makes this the perfect time to retire.

“The COVID stuff is making it so much easier to leave,” Hartsock said, “I still love what I do, but there comes a time when you need to stop it. And luckily, I’m at that mindset right now that I’m ready to not do this anymore. It’s been 41 years. There’s there’s just other stuff to do. I don’t want to regret not doing something.”