Sportscaster lost to virus brought lots of joy
Everything stopped when the program, the first of its kind in Regina, started.
“It's 11 o'clock,” a familiar voice boomed, “and THIS ... IS ... SPORTSLINE!”
And there were Warren Woods and Ron Rimer, pumped and poised to deliver a nightly, halfhour sportscast that quickly became must-see material for anyone who possessed even a passing interest in games people play.
That was in the days, unimaginable now, before the internet. If you wanted to find out how your favourite team had fared on a weeknight, STV (now Global Regina) was the place to stop an hour shy of midnight.
The hosts?
They weren't shy at all, especially when touting their beloved Toronto Maple Leafs, who have won a Stanley Cup as recently as 1967.
Rimbo and Woodsy were a classic combo, their easy chemistry being integral to the program's appeal. Viewers felt as if they were sitting around the table with two good buddies who just happened to be walking the tightrope that is live television.
News is disseminated considerably faster these days, more than a quarter-century after the original Sportsline debuted. A breaking story can instantly
enliven Twitter and heat up a mobile phone.
Such was the flurry around suppertime on Wednesday, when word first circulated that our great pal Woodsy had died at 3:25 that afternoon.
There was an immediate deluge of messages of tribute and condolence — a reflection of how widely loved Woodsy was during his 66 years, half of which he spent in Regina.
“He was family,” Rimer, like Woodsy an original STV'ER, said from Edson, Alta. “My family is down east or in the U.S. He was my rock and my family.
“If you crossed paths with him, you left with a smile on your face and in your heart. The best years of my life were the eight years we spent together in Regina.
“I love that man.”
Everyone loved that man.
Rare is the person who does not have an enemy. Woodsy was
among the elite few who had an innate ability to make everyone feel like his best friend.
“Woodsy was a part of so many families, joining the supper table every night to bring so much more than a few minutes of sports,” said recently elected MLA Derek Meyers, who worked alongside Woodsy for a handful of years in Global's sports department, beginning in 2008.
“He brought honest-to-goodness joy. That's who he was — an old-school guy with a big, genuine laugh that boomed through the speakers and into your soul.
“He touched everyone he met and so many more than he'd ever know, simply by being Woodsy.” Did anyone call him Warren? Chances are that it says “Woodsy” on his birth certificate.
His moniker sounds like “folksy” for a reason.
Yet, despite being a very public person, he was actually a pretty private guy. He never got caught up in his own celebrity, despite working for 46 years in an industry that can be an incubator for egotists.
Woodsy, never one to focus on himself, was always vitally interested in how you were doing. And how's your wife? Your kids? That mindset did not change even after Woodsy was diagnosed with COVID -19 in late November.
“In our last conversation, from his hospital bed, he was more concerned and excited to hear about my first day at the Legislature than wanting to talk about being ill,” Meyers recalled. “That's who he was.
“The only thing bigger than his heart was his laugh. I could hear it in his texts.”
So many people had texted him in recent weeks, praying for an eventual reply.
The prognosis sounded encouraging, to the point where the focus had shifted to longer-term issues.
On Jan. 4, a Gofundme page was established to support Woodsy and his family — he lit up like a blowtorch whenever he mentioned his daughter Nicole and son Chris — during what was expected to be an incremental, yet successful, recovery.
But then he took a turn for the worse and everyone close to him braced themselves for the saddest of news.
“I just can't believe he's gone,” said Arielle Zerr, who worked alongside Woodsy at Regina radio station CJME.
“That laugh ... I'd give anything to hear that laugh again.”