Weather Channel's Seidel buys new scoreboards for Wi-Hi

Wicomico high boys basketball coach Butch Waller was sitting in his office this summer when the phone rang.

It was Mike Seidel.

“He calls a lot,” Waller said. “Asks how things are going. He stops by every time he is in the area. He’s never met a stranger.”

Seidel, who works for the Weather Channel as a meteorologist and field reporter, is a 1975 graduate of Wi-Hi. After chatting with Waller for a bit, Seidel asked Waller if there was anything he could help out with, that the school or team needed.

Waller quickly replied, “Yea. Get me a 6-10 center.”

Seidel couldn’t gift a seven-footer to his old coach, so he asked if there was anything else. Waller mentioned the scoreboards in the gym were dated. Only one worked, and it was 20 years old.

Waller didn’t have to say much else. A few days later a check arrived in the mail so the school could purchase a new scoreboard.

There wasn’t much for fans to cheer about in Wi-Hi’s gym on Dec. 10 as the boys basketball team lost big to the Pocomoke Warriors, but there was plenty of applause before the game when the new “Seidel Memorial Scoreboards” were unveiled.

Wicomico high school bought a smaller scoreboard to match the one Seidel paid for. After the pre-game warm-ups on Dec. 10, Waller and Wicomico County Board of Education officials thanked Seidel for his donation and let him say a few words.

For Seidel, 58, he just wanted to give back to a school and a coach that gave him so much as a kid. He also wanted to emulate what his father did while he was still alive.

“It’s really in honor of my dad,” Seidel said. “He did a lot for the community. He told me, ‘If you have the opportunity to give something back while you’re still alive, then do it.’

“It’s great to be able to come back to my alma mater 40 years later and have the ability to help out the school and help out Coach Waller.”

The new scoreboards are wireless and can be programmed for girls and boys basketball, volleyball and wrestling. The old clock that still works was given to Wicomico middle school, who didn’t have a scoreboard at all for their gym.

“That’s all attributed to Mike,” Waller said. “We would have never gotten a new clocks without him.”

Remembering his dad

Sam Seidel was the chief executive officer and president of Peninsula Insurance Company. Among other charitable donations to the Lower Shore, Seidel endowed $1 million to Salisbury University in 1997 for an education school.

Seidel died in July, 2001 at 78 from cancer.

Seidel served on the White House Council on small business during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, and in 1987 he was awarded the Martin Luther King Award for outstanding community service. He also coached the U.S. All-Star Basketball team on its South American tour in 1951.

But before all of that he preceded Waller as the basketball coach at Wi-Hi. Seidel coached the team there from 1947 to 1952 and guided two teams to the state tournament in College Park.

Even after Seidel had left coaching, he always came to the Wi-Hi games and talked to Waller weekly about hoops.

“When I started coaching, (Sam Seidel) would come to every game and after he’d come in to my office and we’d talk basketball,” Waller said.

When Mike Seidel agreed to donate the money for new scoreboards to the school this summer, all he asked Waller for was that “Seidel Memorial Scoreboard” be written below it, to remember his father who gave so much to Salisbury.

Another kid coached by Waller

Years after Sam Seidel stopped coaching basketball at Wi-Hi, his son would play for the same team.

Seidel played just one season of basketball for Waller as a junior during the 1973-74 season. He was a guard who often came off the bench, but was a valuable asset to Waller’s team and locker room.

“He was a good team guy,” Waller said of Seidel, the basketball player. “He was a pretty decent shooter too. He loves basketball and knows the game too.”

Seidel passed on playing basketball in his senior season to get a bit of a head start on his current career, broadcasting. He videotaped the games.

“We found this old black and white camera in the library and we used it,” Seidel said. “It was an early video tape system. So we’d tape the games and help with scorekeeping.”

“Waller was a great coach for me,” Seidel added. “He was level-headed. He didn’t scream. If someone said he would be here in 2015, I’d say, ‘Really?’”

During the presentation of the new scoreboards, Waller – now in his 50th season – used Seidel as an example of someone who may not have exceeded on the court, but never cut corners in the classroom. The coach told the crowd about Seidel the student, who had a 4.0 grade-point-average and never missed a day of school.

That, Waller said, is part of the reason why he is successful.

And his success led to him being able to give back to where he came from.

Seidel gets back to Salisbury a few times a year. He lives in Atlanta now, where the Weather Channel is located.

For Wi-Hi, replacing scoreboards that were going to be 20 years old started with a call from an alum to his old coach. They were happy that graduate was Seidel, and Seidel was happy to give back to his alma mater.

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