By GREG SEUBERT
When it comes to covering high school sports in northeastern Wisconsin, Doug Ritchay has been there and done that.
Ritchay is a familiar face to local sports fans, as he’s covered high school teams for WLUK – Fox 11 in Green Bay – since 2010.
Originally from Green Bay, he attended the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater before transferring to UW-Green Bay, where he graduated with a journalism degree. He was the sports editor at the West Bend Daily News and Oshkosh Northwestern before joining WLUK 16 years ago after starting his career at newspapers in Marinette and Green Bay.
Newspapers to TV
“I was originally a newspaper guy,” Ritchay said. “My first job was at the Marinette Eagle Star as a news reporter with some sports. In 1993, I went to the Green Bay News-Chronicle and covered the Packers for a decade during the Favre era. I ended up in Milwaukee at a sales job, just trying something different, and that lasted six months. I ended up in West Bend as the sports editor there for four years and Oshkosh for about 2½ years.”
Ritchay left the Northwestern in 2010 to join Fox 11, but admitted the transition from print to television wasn’t easy at first.
“You’re restricted in space (at a newspaper) and only have so much room to write a story,” he said. “Fox 11 brought me on because they wanted me to be a beat reporter like I was for the Packers. They knew my background and wanted me to just go nuts on high school sports and use my reporting skills. Their goal was everyone knows the Packers, but high school sports would be No. 2.
“I had to learn the TV aspect of it and when I first got here, I’m like, ‘No way, I’m never going to learn this,’” he said. “I was looking at the computers that they were writing stories and editing on, but I learned. I still have the newspaper aspect of writing stories for the website, but TV is creativity. It added something to what I was already doing.”
Ritchay has noticed a big change in high school sports since joining WLUK.
“The athletes have been so much better in all sports,” he said. “We get more traction on our website on high school sports than anything else on the sports side of it. Today, I’m going to Winneconne to do a story on the girls’ basketball team. Some other time, I’ll go to De Pere, Kimberly or Appleton. I go to a game a night, but I can’t go to four of them. We have people to help with that.”
Deciding which games, matches or meets to cover isn’t always an easy decision, Ritchay said.
“I will always go to a game that hopefully has two of the better teams in the conference,” he said. “Sometimes that’s kind of hard to know early in the season. I’m probably not going to cover a team that’s going to go 2-22. You seek out the best teams and the best matchups. Maybe I’m doing a story on one of the best athletes in the area and I’ll go and get video of them. It’s based on the best games and the best athletes.”
As part of his job, Ritchay keeps an eye on as many as 100 teams.
“It’s the Green Bay area, it’s the Fox Valley, west to Shawano, the lakeshore with the Manitowoc schools, up to Door County and Marinette,” he said. “Obviously, I don’t know every single thing, but if there’s a good team in Manitowoc, Shawano or Fond du Lac, I will know. There’s never a shortage of things to do as far as covering teams and athletes.”
Winning streaks
Ritchay covered the Kimberly football team’s 70-game winning streak that included five WIAA state championships and undefeated seasons from 2013-17, as well as the Kaukauna softball team’s 108-game winning streak that included state championships in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Ritchay said one of the most memorable games he’s covered is Kimberly’s win over Arrowhead in the Division 1 football championship game in 2015.
“It was the snow globe game – that’s what they called it – and Kimberly won 49-42 in a snowstorm,” he said. “They were down 21 points in the second half.They beat Arrowhead in an unbelievable matchup. That one was championship No. 3 in a row for them. That was win No. 42 in a row and they had two more years to go. I saw the 70th win and I saw the first loss the following year when they got beat by Fond du Lac.”
The Kaukauna softball team’s string of 108 straight wins is another record that Ritchay doesn’t think will be broken anytime soon.
“That was completely insane, to go out there and win 108 games,” he said. “People ask me, ‘What’s the better streak, softball or football?’ I don’t know, but those were two of my favorite teams to cover not because they always won, but because of the kids. They were so much fun to cover. The best part about these teams were the coaches were great and the kids were great. When you cover a team as much as I had to cover those teams, you get to know those kids and it’s fun to get to know them for four years.”
Among the current athletes Ritchay is keeping an eye on this season is Freedom boys’ basketball player Donovan Davis, who helped lead the Irish to state last year as a sophomore and recently committed to play basketball at Iowa State.
“He’s one of a kind, one of the best juniors in the country,” he said.
Ritchay said the favorite part of his job is giving athletes like Davis recognition that they might not get otherwise.
“For most of them, this might be the only time that they’re on TV,” he said. “The kids are cool to be around. They’re all different. It’s fun to talk with them, get to know them a little bit and hopefully put a smile on their face.
“They appreciate it when I show up and they let me know,” he added. “They’ll say, ‘Thanks for coming to practice’ or ‘Thanks for coming to the game.’ That’s the best part.”
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