The sixth episode of SoCal Sports Weekly took some doing, but Charles Smith and myself were able to put together what we feel is an outstanding edition of the program for you this week. We encourage you to go to our page on the No Antenna Needed Radio network and listen to it right now.
The long-awaited and highly-anticipated interview with Los Angeles Kings head coach Terry Murray is in the first hour of this two-hour program. Charles and I spoke with him on a variety of topics for the coming season. This included his thoughts on: the goaltending situation, the Matt Greene injury and its impact on the defense, the continued development of Jack Johnson and Anze Kopitar, whether Brayden Schenn will be on this year's roster, and many other topics. We are so thankful that Murray joined us twice as it turned out, because last week's episode had a technical glitch and did not air. He didn't have to endure another gab fest with us but he handled it with a great sense of professionalism and class. He even endured my attempts to further the legend of 'The Marshmallow'.
Also in the first hour this week we spoke with Anaheim Ducks assistant coach Dave Farrish. Because of my affiliation with the Kings as their beat reporter for Examiner and as a featured contributor to the Hockeywood LA website, I'm cognizant of wanting to be balanced in our coverage of all of the sports teams in this market - that's the premise of our show, that we don't slant just towards a couple of teams and sports like the other shows do with the Lakers and Dodgers. So we contacted the Ducks PR department, and they efforted us the chance to speak with coach Farrish, who has been with the club since Randy Carlyle joined as head coach in 2005. Farrish gave some great insight about the changes to the Ducks for this season, primarily on the blueline. He was quick to correctly point out that my assertion of Luca Sbisa's season being a lost one because he was sent back to juniors after eight games. Farrish talked about how Sbisa should benefit from the extra seasoning, and that he is excited for the chance to work with these younger players this season. We thank him and the Ducks for appearing on the show.
In the second hour, we provide a variety of sports conversations with three of our correspondents. Mario Melara is our soccer correspondent, and he provides us the low down on not just the MLS teams in the market, but also a preview of mens and womens collegiate soccer here in this market. He does a great job covering Chivas USA for 90:00 Soccer Magazine, and he pulls no punches on his opinions about the sport.
We then introduced two other correspondents to our audience for the first time. Courtney Ports is our hockey correspondent, and we reset with him not only what Murray and Farrish talked with us about in the first hour, but also what Kings and Ducks fans should know with training camp just a few weeks away. Then Adam Jared Smith hopped on the line to talk about the Lakers and Clippers as our pro basketball correspondent. Adam filled us in on how the draft picks of the two clubs performed during summer league play, and reviewed those coming and going this off-season.
We also had planned to air a conversation we recorded with Donny Raimon, who covers the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks for Examiner.com and does a great job doing so. The Sparks were able to salvage a disappointing season, dealing with the losses of both Lisa Leslie to retirement and Candace Parker to a major injury, and qualified for the playoffs this week where they will face Seattle in the first round. However, due to time constraints, we were unable to air this interview. We thank Donny for joining us though, and we encourage all of you to read his stories about the Sparks on Examiner right now. We hope to have him on again in the near future.
We've continued to try and grow this radio show based upon what we feel you want us to be talking about and also what we feel are stories that are being ignored that shouldn't be. We also are not content to rest on our laurels - meaning that as a great as this show is, in our humble opinion, our best show hopefully is our next show.
To that end, next week will see us begin a two-week preview of the upcoming college football season. And in addition to having our college football correspondent Chris Griffin make his debut in that role next week to talk about UCLA and USC with us, we will also be speaking about the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference at the Division III level. They play a spirited and highly competitive brand of football in this league, and we want to you to have the appreciation for these programs that we do.
On the next episode, we will talk with Bob Owens, the head coach of Chapman University which plays an independent schedule but sees the majority of that schedule come against teams from the SCIAC. Also next week, three of the seven head coaches from the SCIAC will join us: Ben McEnroe of Cal Lutheran, Andrew Ankeny from LaVerne, and Steve Retzlaff who is the new head coach at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. Then the following week, we're scheduled to speak with coaches from the other four league teams: Occidental, Pomona-Pitzer, Redlands, and Whittier.
Charles and I have some announcements coming soon about some additional internet programming that we're going to be rolling out in the next few weeks that we are very excited about. We appreciate your continuing support of our projects and hope that you will listen to the latest edition of SoCal Sports Weekly on the No Antenna Needed Radio network.
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