Ephrata radio broadcaster Dave Middleton, right, acknowledges applause directed at him with his wife, Billie, at his side. Middleton, the "Voice of the Tigers" for a quarter-century, called his last game Friday.   JEFF HALLER/Yakima Herald-Republic View all photos for this story.

Battling ALS, longtime Ephrata radio broadcaster
Dave Middleton sets down his microphone


By SCOTT SANDSBERRY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

This is a story of a love affair. Nothing illicit or unseemly. Nothing even behind closed doors. This love affair — between a community and a man, a school and a man, a girls’ basketball team and that same man — has been played out in crowded gymnasiums, on the air of a rural radio station and at center court.

Dave Middleton has been the radio voice of Ephrata sports teams for a quarter of a century. He has done his unpaid announcing gig for KULE Ephrata simply because he admires the effort of the players, not just during the game but for all they have put into their sport over months and years.

Now, Middleton’s months are growing shorter. And that has made every Tiger game that much more precious.

Middleton was diagnosed early last year with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis — usually referred to simply as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

“ALS is very simple,” says Middleton, who speaks matter-of-factly about his situation. “No known cause for it. And no known cure.”

Essentially, the disease kills the nerves, and nerves are what control the muscles. Things stop working. His right hand and arm no longer work. He figures he’s got “about 5 percent” of the control remaining in his left hand. Dave’s wife, Billie, has become, almost literally, his right hand, carrying in his equipment and hooking up all of the gear.

But as he has been only too aware of the increasing decline of his body’s faculties, he has only recently become aware of just what he has meant to the small, largely agricultural community of Ephrata. Just how much he is loved.

Says Middleton, “It’s just amazing. I had no idea.”

He began to get an idea during a late-season home game against archrival Quincy. At halftime, he was told he needed to come down to the court, and he had an announcing partner cover for him.

“He had no clue what we were doing,” recalls athletic director Michele Webb.

As Middleton descended to the court, he began to hear his own voice over the public-address system — the closing seconds of his KULE broadcast of Ephrata’s girls winning the 2000 state championship game. On court, school officials presented him with a jacket emblazoned with the words, “Voice of the Tigers.”

And the jam-packed gymnasium — including visiting fans from Quincy — rose and began to applaud. One minute. Two minutes. Three. Five. Nobody wanted to stop. Not a dry eye in the place. A five-minute standing ovation for the man who has spent 25 years lifting the spirits of a community and its athletes.

“Dave’s such a great guy,” Alain Black, the star of that 2001 team and now a Tigers assistant coach, says as she battles tears. “It’s not just basketball. He’s always the guy who, after a loss, is telling you, hey, you played well, you were great. He’s always there for everybody. And he has such a love for the game.”

And those in it love him right back.

Just before the district tournament, the Tiger girls presented him a team portrait, signed by all the players. Not just any team picture, though. It was one taken with the girls in the bleachers, each holding a letter so that they spelled out “THANK YOU, DAVE.”

But that was only the start of it.

Tigers coach Missy Beierman, who had gone to school with Middleton’s daughter, Brenda, overheard Dave mentioning to a friend at the school how he would really hoped to be able to keep announcing through the end of the season, and how he’d really love to get back to state one last time.

Once the girls heard that, that became their drive. Let’s do it for Dave.

“He just gave us a huge reason to go to state,” junior guard Courtney Webb says. “Our drive to make it here was for him. He’s done so much for us and for the program.”

“When we first found out this was his last wish,” says junior forward Jennifer Bair, it essentially became the girls’ primary wish. Says Bair, “We would let him know how much he means to us.”

The Tigers lost a second-round district game to then-unbeaten East Valley, putting them into a loser-out, winner-to-state game against Cascade. When Ephrata won that, clinching a state berth, Middleton was still on the air when, one by one, the Tiger girls came up into the stands and formed a circle around him. Without words, they were saying it again: That was for you, Dave.

Says Middleton, “That’s the first time in 25 years I lost it on the air.”

So the Tigers came to the tournament. As Dave was sitting at courtside preparing for Thursday’s game, the Tigers’ five seniors came up behind him with a couple of gifts — commemorative T-shirts in the Tigers’ colors of black and orange. They each gave him a hug and left. Dave set the T-shirts aside and went about going over his game notes.

Billie, who knew what was going on, had to ask him, “Did you see what’s on the back?”

He hadn’t, so she held one up for him. And there, on the back, were the names and numbers of every team member. And across the middle was the message, the theme, the story of the 2004-2005 Ephrata basketball program, the words that made Dave Middleton smile and cry at the same time:

DOING IT FOR DAVE.