Sports Announcing
Gates was highly respected as a sports announcer well outside the northern Indiana. When tiny Milan High School won the state basketball championship at Butler University's Hinkle Fieldhouse in 1954, Hilliard Gates was at the microphone - and his delivery was so powerful and distinctive that he was also used as the announcer in the 1986 movie, Hoosiers, a fictionalized story based on the Milan team's accomplishments.
Hilliard was the announcer who first introduced many sports to Fort Wayne television. He appeared on more network broadcasts than any other announcer in Indiana history, and in 1967 and 1968, he broadcast the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California for NBC radio. Hilliard was named Indiana Sportscaster of the Year seven times and was nominated for the honor 20 consecutive years. He was the first broadcaster to be inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame (1969). In 1977, the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association cited him for his long contribution to Indiana basketball.
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Famous quotes containing the words sports and/or announcing:
“...I didn’t come to this with any particular cachet. I was just a person who grew up in the United States. And when I looked around at the people who were sportscasters, I thought they were just people who grew up in the United States, too. So I thought, Why can’t a woman do it? I just assumed everyone else would think it was a swell idea.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 85 (June 17, 1991)
“A trial cannot be conducted by announcing the general culpability of a civilization. Only the actual deeds which, at least, stank in the nostrils of the entire world were brought to judgment.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)