(Photo courtesy of Kelly Schultz)
Kelly
Schultz had a friend who had a good problem to have. With that said, it was
still a problem.
Karin
Housley, a Minnesota State Senator, had hoped to attend the 2017 Kentucky
Derby. But her husband, NHL veteran-turned-assistant coach Phil Housley, had
commitments south of the state border.
Phil’s
Nashville Predators were on a travel day between Games 5 and 6 of the Central
Division Final. They would be home the next day to ultimately abolish the St.
Louis Blues, their second obstacle on their road to the Stanley Cup Final.
Schultz,
whose own hockey knowhow manifests itself through play-by-play duties with the
Bemidji State women’s program, learned Sen. Housley would be attending a Derby
viewing party in Nashville. The founder of her own millinery company, she
enhanced Housley’s experience by crafting her a fascinator in Predators colors.
“What
is a fascinator? That’s what everyone asks me,” she said in a recent email
exchange with Pucks and Recreation. “Well, that’s what our friends across the
pond call those elaborate headpieces worn at royal weddings.”
Royal
weddings, and other occasions that have the look of a time warp to The Age of Innocence. For example,
annual horse races on this side of the Atlantic that date back to 1875.
That
was how Schultz came through for Housley. She eased the downside of her dilemma
by making her look the part as both a horse-racing and hockey enthusiast.
The
premise and destination of the lavish lid resonated on multiple fronts for the
Beavers broadcaster as well. When she is not immersed in sewing or sports,
Schultz is spinning music for Babe Country 98.3 FM in Bemidji.
“I
think most people outside of Minnesota would be surprised about how popular
country music is here,” Schultz admits.
Babe
Country — whose moniker is a takeoff on Paul Bunyan’s pet blue ox — is one of
two country stations in the market. Both happen to be the two most-listened to
stations in the area.
But
for the St. Paul native, it took a childhood journey to the Tennessee capital to
get hooked. Before that, she was content with a steady diet of Neil Diamond and
Minnesota’s own Prince.
“My
dad owned every one of Neil’s albums,” she said, “and I could sing ‘Sweet
Caroline’ word for word before it became a popular stadium anthem.”
Schultz’s
parents were regulars at the annual Marine Corps League convention, which was
generally the basis of the family of three’s summer vacation. Country stations
were practically more rampant than rest areas in most of the rural locales they
drove through. But that alone was too impersonal to sway the budding all-round
radio connoisseur.
The
year she traveled to Nashville, an encounter with Lorrie Morgan filled that
void. The “Five Minutes” singer became Country Music Acquaintance Zero when she
posed for a photo and gave Schultz her autograph.
“Since
then, I’ve met Little Big Town, Jo Dee Messina, Craig Morgan, Phil Vassar, Trace
Adkins and Lee Ann Womack,” said Schultz. “All thanks to working in country
radio.”
Twin piques
Where
Schultz (nee Freichels) credits her father, Arthur, for instilling an
infatuation with music, she credits her late mother, LaVanche, for imparting an
interest in design and a sports zeal. Taking the latter love to the airwaves
has yielded a similarly quantitative and qualitative list of friends and
influences.
After
her first season of calling the Beavers in 2007-08, Schultz joined the
Association for Women in Sports Media. The AWSM’s roster is a who’s who of
broadcasting and print pioneers. Those who Schultz has rubbed elbows with
include Christine Brennan (USA Today),
Linda Cohn (ESPN), Suzy Kolber (ESPN, Fox) and Lesley Visser (Boston Globe, ABC, CBS).
But
long before that, she had another female sports-crazed voice to feed off of at
home. LaVanche all but single-handedly orchestrated one of her daughter’s
earliest hockey memories when she scored three North Stars tickets. The game in
question yielded one of many memorable melees between Minnesota’s Dino
Ciccarelli and Chicago’s Denis Savard.
“My
mother stood up and yelled, ‘Let’s see some blood. C’mon Dino!’” Schultz
recalled. “My dad and I slumped down in our seats, pretending not to know the
crazy woman screaming.
“I
loved that about her, her passion for the game.”
That
fervor trickled down and built a steady depth in the next generation. Schultz’s
former babysitter, who dated a member of the Hill-Murray School’s powerhouse
team, inspired her to enroll at the St. Paul-area Catholic institution herself.
Much
like Nashville with country music, going there enlivened what she already knew
through the media about her state’s unique high-school hockey craze. She
graduated in 1990, as did Craig Johnson, a soon-to-be Minnesota Gopher and
eventual veteran of 10 NHL seasons. They both barely missed out on
Hill-Murray’s fourth state championship run the next winter.
But
tragedy struck in the home barely six months before Kelly Freichels’
commencement. On Nov. 12, 1989, LaVanche suffered a fatal heart attack at age
47. Kelly’s sports and sewing mentor was gone far too soon.
A
self-proclaimed “self-taught milliner and costume designer,” Schultz has
carried on to retain a repertoire that neglects no aspect of LaVanche’s legacy.
In
the process, she has found ways to honor other influential relatives. She named
her enterprise the Angeline Alice Millinery after her two grandmothers,
Angeline Freichels and Alice Grubich. With it, she has produced such
sports-oriented gear as BSU newsboy caps and a Minnesota Vikings fascinator.
Of
her mother, Schultz says, “She made everything from blankets to curtains to
cute little jumpsuits and dresses when I was a little girl. She taught me how
to sew when I was about eight years old, and the rest is history.”
If
she did not put that history on hold, she at least relegated it to the
proverbial backburner for a time. The way LaVanche’s other pastime lived on
through Kelly all but derailed the latter’s fashion design dreams in college.
Enrolling
at the University of Minnesota, she went to class in a Twins 1987 World Series
championship sweatshirt. Most of the other would-be design majors, she
recalled, “had multi-colored hair and fingernails painted black.”
Apparently,
the notion of creatively combining different interests did not strike the
professor. The concept of team-inspired clothing was as foreign as that of, say,
the Nashville Predators at the time. (The franchise came into existence in
1998.)
Hearing
her professor single out her attire as “what not to wear if you wanted to be a
fashion designer,” Schultz shifted gears back to sportscasting. And once again,
the comfort of home fostered her path. A TV ad for Brown College in Minneapolis
touted the institute’s radio and television certificate program.
“I
had already tried community college, university and now decided technical college
might be the way to go,” she said.
Upon
graduating in October 1993, Schultz moved to the Wisconsin border town of
Hudson. Her first array of radio duties there set the tone for her present-day
regimen. By weekday, she jockeyed for a big band station. By weekend, she served
a contingent of University of Nebraska alums determined to pick up Cornhusker
football games in Stillwater, Minn.
“I
spent every Saturday during the college football season making sure those listeners
got to hear every play,” she said. “I even became a bandwagon fan. The
Cornhuskers were pretty good that year. And I’m still friends with my very
first radio manager, Tom Witschen.”
The
‘one-woman-show’
Professionally
speaking, Schultz’s relationship with Bemidji State has easily outlasted all
prior attachments with any other entity. Five years into her tenure, she
attained an undergraduate degree in sports management from the university.
Despite
all of that, or maybe because of it, she is not afraid to be firm with the
Beavers when the situation calls for it.
After
answering Pucks and Rec’s inquiry, Schultz jetted off to Potsdam, N.Y., to call
BSU’s two-game set with defending national champion Clarkson. In the series
opener, the contesting goaltenders waged a classic arm-wrestling marathon
before Bemidji broke down late. The Golden Knights escaped with a 2-0 victory.
Upon
returning to the booth for Game 2 this past Saturday, Schultz had a blunt introductory
mashup prepared. Based on Friday’s postgame pickups with head coach Jim Scanlan
and her own observations, she drew a clear-cut conclusion.
And
being the DJ that she is, she cued up the perfect song of the day for the
background. She set Saturday’s opening essay and highlight package to a
soundtrack from the British pop band Keane. Whether the emphasized refrain,
“You could do so much better than this,” illustrated or lightened the mood was
in the ear of the listener.
“The
Beavs are way better than how they played last night,” Schultz offered in the
intro. “At least, I think so. And
most BSU fans would agree after watching them a week ago.” (Bemidji had tied
Syracuse, 0-0, then crushed the Orange, 5-0, to start its regular season.)
That
is what 13 years going on 14 of seven-day autumn and winter work weeks have
done to her. She has a life beyond the Beavers, but willingly uses her outside
passions to underscore her care for the team.
After
her Hudson gig, five years back across the state border took Schultz around a
multitude of Mississippi River towns. In June 2004, she moved north with her
husband, Brian Schultz, and joined him on the Beavers beat.
For
the first year, she produced the football and men’s hockey broadcasts that he
announced. She kept her vocal cords in shape as a sideline reporter and
substitute studio anchor.
Those
dues became dividends after three years. BSU women’s hockey went in house for a
play-by-play announcer, granting what Schultz dubs “the opportunity of a
lifetime.”
The
gig began with seven lean seasons under Steve Sertich. The Beavers finished
.500 in only one season under his direction. They have more recently risen to a
reckonable status under Scanlan. They cracked the 20-win plateau in his first two
seasons, reached the 2015 conference tournament final and pushed the dynastic
Gophers to a rubber game in a best-of-three quarterfinal series last year.
The
first winning campaign she covered, 2011-12, coincided with another upgrade of
sorts for Schultz. She started her first DJ job since her Hudson days with a
Beaver Radio Network sister station, WMIS FM 92.1. She added the country
station to her plate in 2016. But she has not subtracted much, if any, glamorous
or grunt work from her sportscasting side.
“I
have always said, ‘I’m at my best when I’m busy,’” she said. “Proudly, I also
wear many hats, pun intended.”
Unless
the Beavers are on the road, Schultz spends five weekdays hosting a four-hour
midday music program on Babe Country. The rest of the time, she takes charge of
fielding off-air phone calls and welcoming visitors to the studio.
In
a typical travel-free week, she will accumulate no fewer than 26 hours on the
air. Outside of her primary day job, the other six hours come from two games,
plus the two-hour “Go Green Mill Coaches Show” on Wednesday nights.
That
does not take into account her research and reception hours. She spends her
Sundays preparing questions for Monday media day with BSU’s other women’s
athletic teams. Hockey grants access on Tuesday, and Schultz wastes no time
weaving what she extracts into the coming weekend’s first game broadcast intro.
Thursday’s
extracurricular activity, as it were, entails cobbling clips from around the
women’s WCHA. Last season, her 10th covering the league, Schultz began
producing a podcast condensing the conference’s week that was into a span of
three-to-five minutes.
And
all of this is still leaving out her millinery minutes. That notwithstanding,
the aroma of artificial ice never fails to pump a second wind into the State of
Hockey native’s tank.
“Friday
is my favorite day of the week,” Schultz said. “I’m a one-woman show. I
engineer, produce and voice my broadcasts, which includes pregame coach and
player interviews, intermission interviews with players and postgame with our
BSU coach.”
The
single-sleep turnaround between Games 1 and 2 may constitute the cruncher of
the week. But the call for creativity helps to cancel some of the pressure.
Case in point, the “better than this” motif of the Clarkson series.
When
the Beavers perform favorably and get results, country star Luke Bryan’s
“That’s My Kind Of Night” may cue up. Or Hunter Hayes’ “Where It All Begins”
may punctuate anticipation, as it did for this season’s opening game.
“That’s
where my love of music really shines,” said Schultz. “I love finding songs that
fit what just happened.”
Royal inspiration
The
2017 Kentucky Derby brought symmetry to two crucial developments in Schultz’s
life. She had befriended Karin Housley from a distance during the 2009 Men’s
Frozen Four, where Brian broadcasted BSU’s semifinal appearance. Schultz tagged
along and used her new Twitter account to keep the future state senator up to
speed.
“I
later found out that she was married to former NHLer Phil Housley and that they
had a cabin on Leech Lake in Walker, Minn., just 40 minutes from where Brian
and I called home,” she said. “We’ve been friends ever since.”
Two
years later, while Prince William and Kate Middleton were tying the knot,
Schultz read a text from another friend. Highlighting the headwear of the
wedding guests, the message insisted, “Kel, you could totally make these!”
On
that particular Friday, the Beavers had been out of season for nine weeks. The
woman whose Twins sweatshirt once ostensibly precluded such activity spent the
evening tinkering with textiles.
The
productive burst of inspiration was the basis for her business. Within a year,
she was invited back to the Twin Cities for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Fashion
Week’s Emerging Designer Showcase.
Leading
up to this year’s Derby, the Angeline Alice Millinery garnered a mention in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The May 5
listicle singled out seven dealers of “stylish Minnesota hats,” and Angeline
Alice was one of the few establishments based outside of the Twin Cities area.
Schultz’s
insatiable appetite for originality is the enterprise’s key intangible.
“Since
April 29, 2011, I have made hundreds of fascinators,” she said. “Every one of
them I make is unique. I pride myself on that, because who wants to show up to
a party wearing the same thing as someone else, right?”
But
granted, “unique” does not mean devoid of any similarity to another product.
Schultz’s ambition last spring was such that her fascination with Predators
fascinators did not stop with one Nashville hockey wife.
The
Preds’ playoff run would prove to be veteran forward and first-year captain Mike
Fisher’s swan song. He had spent his last six-plus seasons in the city most
natural for his wife of seven years, Carrie Underwood.
With
Housley’s fascinator, Schultz had already intertwined two of her three defining
passions. With the Queen of Country, she saw a seam with which to complete her
ultimate (pun inescapable here) hat trick.
Housley
happily accepted her fascinator, and passed along the other to Underwood.
Two-and-a-half weeks after the playoffs ended, the Angeline Alice account fished for feedback via Twitter. “Hi @carrieunderwood! How did you like the
fascinator I made for you in @PredsNHL's colors? Hope you ❤
it!”
More
than four months later, there is still no confirmation of receipt from the
Queen herself. But Underwood’s silence does not miff a levelheaded radio
personality whose own itinerary can make a honeybee blush.
“I
didn’t take it personally,” Schultz said. “I’m sure she gets inundated with fan
mail, gifts, et cetera.
“Maybe
someday Carrie will reach out to me for something special to wear to one of
those award shows. A girl can dream, right?”
