Longtime Griz play-by-play man Mick Holien dies

Montana Grizzly fans are melancholy this Thanksgiving week with the news that Mick Holien, a play-by-play announcer at the University of Montana for 31 years, passed away at age 76.

Holien had been living in semi-retirement in Polson since leaving the Grizzlies’ microphone after the 2015-16 Griz men’s basketball season. In early 2015, not long after he was told his contract would not be renewed at UM, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

He died of complications of MS, according to 406mtsports.com. SkylineSports.com was among the first to share the news of his death, via twitter early Friday.

A Spokane native, Holien came to Missoula in 1984 to work at Westside Lanes, after stints as a clubbie for Spokane’s minor league baseball team and as a bowling columnist at the Spokesman-Review. In one of many profiles that ran in the Missoulian Holien said he was fired for trying to organize a union at the Spokesman.

His radio career more or less began by accident: He started doing bowling spots and then contributing to a morning show in Missoula, and those duties led him to be news director at KGVO.

Holien said he’d called 2-3 high school games when he was approached to do Lady Griz basketball play-by-play ahead of the 1985-86 season. He held those duties until he took over for the retiring Bill Schwanke on Griz football and men’s basketball broadcasts in 1993. It was just after he’d started as a reporter at the Missoulian; he hadn’t applied for the job. (Holien left the paper in 2005).

Up until then Holien had been the public address announcer at Washington-Grizzly Stadium from its first game in 1986.

“Here’s the one thing I’ll always remember. He just had that voice,” Kalispell businessman Brad Salonen said Saturday. “People doing that for a living, just have that voice.”

It was Salonen, who played for the Griz from 1985-88, that first filled the role of football color analyst for Holien.

“I think they asked my brother (Brian) first because of who he was, and he said no,” Salonen said. “I think after my brother said no, Don Read said, ‘Go talk to Brad.’

“I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do, and Mick said, ‘Just pretend we’re sitting next to each other on a couch, watching the game. Except you can’t swear.’ “

Salonen and Holien teamed up for five seasons that included a national championship, a runner-up finish and five Big Sky Conference titles.

“Mick loved the Griz. and was just that Griz guy,” Salonen said. “You’d turn on the radio and they’d be down 20 and you knew he thought they could come back. He was so positive about the games. He always looked for the positives to broadcast.

“You don’t win them all, but he called a lot of wins. That’s for sure.”

Scott Gurnsey, a Griz receiver from 1991-94, took over for Salonen and was Holien’s right-hand man for 18 seasons.

“He actually three weeks ago nominated me for the Griz Hall of Fame,” Gurnsey said. “There were a lot of flights and a lot of team trips, a lot of dinners, a lot of beers.

“You know what, he was knowledgeable about just about everything. What I thought was super cool, it didn’t matter if you were a 4-year-old or an old-timer, he made time for you.”

Holien called more than 800 games while at UM, working alongside seven different football coaches, six different men’s basketball coaches and under seven athletic directors.

“He would come up on those booster trips to Cut Bank,” recalled Jim O’Day. “So actually when I moved down (to Missoula) in March of 1998 I lived with him for four months. But we never saw each other because at that time he was working at the Missoulian.”

O’Day, who came to UM to work with the Grizzly Scholarship Association, eventually was UM’s athletic director from 2005-12. O’Day took over at AD for Read, who coached the Griz footbal teams from 1986-95.

Holien authored or co-authored three books on Grizzly football and spent six decades building up a sizable sports memorabilia collection. He began selling that off in 2016, partly to help his grandkids -- a complete survivors’ list isn’t available but he recently listed four children and six grandchildren -- pay for college.

“Every time you’d go somewhere he’d send you off with a couple baseballs,” O’Day said. “In case you ran into somebody.”

He wound up with, among other things, a baseball signed by Doris Day and Cary Grant. But in Montana, Mick Holien was just as much a household name.

“Those classic calls: ‘Left to right on the radio dial; Touchdown Montana!’ “ Gurnsey said. “People that love the Griz will never forget that or Mick’s passion for Montana’s sports teams.”

The quote that rises above all is one Holien lifted from John Wooden to close each Griz broadcast.

“Kevin Bartsch talked about that yesterday,” Salonen said of his Griz teammate. “‘Be at your best when your best is needed.’ ”

It is quite the final sign-off.