P’Burg Proud: Meet ‘Mike Moore’ and Read How His Five Decades of Love for Phillipsburg Sports Began at a Wrestling Match

PHILLIPSBURG, NJ - Mike Moore has been around the Phillipsburg High School sports scene professionally for five decades as a radio, television and streaming broadcaster. The velvet voiced Moore actually started his love for  Stateliners sports as a youngster when his dad took him to wrestling matches.

“I went to my first match in 1964 when P’burg and North Hunterdon wrestled to a 22-22 draw.” Mike said with remarkable recollection. “I went to my first districts the next year and I remember the gym being packed. (Athletic Director) Walt Miller would go around and point at kids in the crowd and we would go sit around the mat.

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“I’ve always been a stats guy so I would sit there and keep score. When Thad Turner came on as coach right before that the whole place fell in love with wrestling.”

HIS GIVEN NAME IS MIKE KORP

Mike was born Michael Dennis Korp, the second of four boys of Ann Marie and Dennis Korp. The family grew up in Phillipsburg on Irwin St. and the boys were always outside playing something growing up.

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“There was an empty lot next to our house and all the neighborhood kids played everything there,” Mike says. “Steve Searfoss, who would go on to become one of the best offensive linemen ever at Phillipsburg, says I announced all of the games we played but that’s not really true.”

Mike changed his last name when he followed his older brother by two years, Matt, both Phillipsburg Catholic High School and Seton Hall University graduates, to a radio station in Somerville when each broke into the communication field.

“I didn’t want there to be a Mike Korp following a Matt Korp at the same station,” he said. “I was looking for some alliteration and before my first broadcast in the fall of 1978 I pulled Mike Moore out of thin air and it’s been my professional name ever since.”

Mike’s youngest brother, Bob, now calls wrestling matches with him on Phillipsburg High School’s streaming service.

HUMBLING BEGINNINGS

Mike began at local radio station WEST in 1980 reading news and doing color commentary on an occasional sporting event.

The first Phillipsburg High School sports event Mike ever covered came in 1980 when the Stateliners traveled to play Shabazz in a second-round NJSIAA boys basketball state tournament contest. It was quite a way to break into the Phillipsburg High School sports business.

“I announced the game with Tom Corcoran and P’burg pulled off a big upset,” Mike recalls. “That’s the team with Steve Hrymack, Jimmy Clymer and Jeff Quinn. We were interviewing coach Tom Fisher afterwards and we were surrounded by unhappy Shabazz fans.

“A cop escorted us out to the bus and as we pulled away Shabazz fans were throwing rocks at the bus. It was a very famous day in P’burg athletics. We were on the floor of the bus as we drove away.”

“I was 17 years old and had never been in an environment like that,” said Quinn, who scored a career-high 18 points in the game before becoming a teacher at P’burg and the football team’s offensive coordinator for many years. “We were told to get down so that’s what we did. We pulled out and that was about it.”

WEST RADIO

Mike announced the NJSIAA individual wrestling championships for the radio station from 1983-2006 as well as the Pennsylvania championships in the same time frame except the few years they were competing on the same weekend.

Mike and Bruce Nagy called the 1983 boys basketball Group 3 state championship victory , 53-52, over Ewing at the Meadowlands in the most memorable and significant basketball victory in school history.

He called the Turkey Day rivalry from 1997- 2006 on radio and continued with the television call, along with P’burg Hall of Famer Ned Bolcar on the color commentary, for the Sports Tradition Network for a few more seasons.

“Working in the booth with Mike was easy,” said Bolcar, a 1985 graduate who went on to become a star linebacker at Notre Dame and also played in the NFL. “He’s always so well prepared and knows how to set the color guy up. He’s the ultimate professional.”

Color commentators, also known as color analysts, provide expert analysis, background information, and insight. This can include statistics, strategy, injury reports, anecdotes, or light humor.

The entire Phillipsburg-Easton sports community collectively groaned when WEST changed formats and no longer broadcast sports-related content from the two schools in 2007.

Mike’s been the broadcaster on Phillipsburg’s High School’s streaming service for home wrestling matches since 2015 as well as football since 2020 and has also covered basketball games. He’s also a committee member of Phillipsburg High Sports Hall of Fame and pours over hours of research to find possible candidates for the 12-person committee to vote on.

He’s also the master of ceremony for the school’s induction ceremony as well as a member of the Phillipsburg-Easton football Hall of Fame committee and introduces the inductees over the public address system at Fisher Field on Thanksgiving Day. In addition, Mike is the emcee for the Thanksgiving Eve Booster Club event.

SHOW ME THE…….MOVES

Although Mike knew most of the wresting moves, he made it a point to brush up on what he was watching before taking over wrestling at WEST.

“I never wrestled a day in my life,” he says. “I was a basketball player growing up. When (WEST Sports Director) Dick Hammer told me wrestling was all mine, I went to a Phillipsburg Athletic Club youth practice to make sure if I saw a fireman’s carry, I wanted to make sure what one looked like. Dave Boncher was one of the kids showing me the moves. I had a good idea what the moves were, but I didn’t want to be calling a cross-face cradle when it was a half nelson.”

That’s Mike. Ever the perfectionist. Since day one.

LUCKY 13

Mike called move-by-move coverage for 13 of the most successful continuous individual state champion runs in school history when 10 wrestlers combined to win 13 state titles from 1984, starting with Dave Boncher and Mike Barna and ending with Timmy Moore and Marc DeFrancesco in 1996.

Boncher, Greg Troxell and Pete Poretta each won two individual state titles in the run and in five instances P’burg crowned multiple title winners.

“Scott Frinzi won in the last 12 seconds and Petey Poretta won in the last few seconds when he needed to pop his head to beat the Rossi kid from Kittatinny after Pete lost to him in regionals,” Mike said. “Your heart is into it when calling those matches. You’ve come to know some of these kids and you want to see them succeed. I’ve been close to a few families, too. Bobby Piccione, a state runner up, said he used to listen to me before a match to get ready for his bout.

“That was a pretty cool run though. They also had a lot of guys in the finals in those years that lost so there was some heartbreak, too. You knew people were hanging out by their radios back then if they didn’t go to Princeton or Atlantic City to watch.”

Mike was also the color commentator for the last two of John Barna’s three state championships (1980-81-82) right before the 13-year run. Add John Barna’s titles in and it was 11 wrestlers winning 16 titles in a 17-year span with Mike calling 15 of those titles matches either as the play-by-play or color commentator.

SUPPORTIVE WIFE

Mike worked in the communication field for the cities of Easton as well as Allentown for many years along with his radio gigs which took a lot of time away from home and most weekends in-season.  It takes a loyal companion to put up with all the time spent away from home.

Mike and his wife, Mary Jo, will soon celebrate 37 years of marriage.

“It takes a very supportive wife and Mary Jo has been every bit of that,” Mike said. “When we were dating, she’d take a Walkman to matches and listen to me calling it. That’s how she learned wrestling.”

ICON

Bolcar calls Mike, who was on the radio call in Ned’s final two football seasons at P’burg, a media icon as far as Phillipsburg sports goes.

“He knows everything,” said Bolcar, who still religiously follows P’burg’s sports and can often be found in the press box on Friday night’s. “Him and Dick Hammer come to mind when you think of local sports media icons over the years. I’m sure I’m missing someone but those are the first two I think of.”

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