College Hockey Pioneer Bob Olson Passes Away

CHN Staff Report

Former long-time Michigan Tech hockey broadcaster, and college hockey pioneer, Bob Olson, passed away Saturday in Middletown, Conn. He was 87.

Olson began broadcasting Tech athletic events back in 1969 when he purchased WMPL and WZRK and moved to the Copper Country from Hurley, Wis. He started with men's basketball and football before adding hockey to the lineup in 1970-71, calling his first game on November 13, 1970. Olson was known as the Dean of Broadcasters in all of college hockey and did hockey play-by-play for 32 seasons until his retirement after the 2000-01 season.

Nationally, Olson is more well known as the originator of the WMPL College Hockey Poll — the first of its kind in the nation. WMPL also served as the clearinghouse for all of the country's college hockey scores with its call-in score service run by Bob and his wife Edda.

Olson was inducted into the Michigan Tech Sports Hall of Fame in 1994. He also received the WCHA Distinguished Service Award in 1997 and the American Hockey Coaches Association Jim Fullerton Award in 1996 for someone "who gave as much as he received and never stopped caring about the direction in which our game was heading." The Tech men's basketball team hands out yearly the Bob Olson Award to the team's top newcomer.

The press box at the John MacInnes Student Ice Arena is named in his honor. The Bob Olson Broadcast Center was dedicated during Winter Carnival 2001.

Mix 93 WKMJ and WMPL — originally owned by Olson — continue to broadcast every Michigan Tech hockey, football, men's and women's basketball, and select volleyball games.

For more on the life of Bob Olson, see our 2002 profile of him.