Photo by Skip Rowland/Randolph-Macon College
Though better known for his work with VCU, for the past 15 years, Terry Sisisky was the voice of Randolph-Macon football. As one of the best prepared and most dedicated broadcasters in the business, Sisisky was rarely seen with a joke or a smile. On Thursday, Sisisky passed away after a brief battle with cancer.

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Terry Sisisky dead at age 58

The Richmond airwaves lost a friend and a historic voice on Thursday evening when longtime radio broadcaster Terry Sisisky passed away after a brief bout with cancer. Sisisky was diagnosed in April, soon after completing television broadcasts of the VHSL state basketball championships.

  Nicknamed “T-Man” Sisisky was best known as the voice of VCU basketball, where he spent 28 years.  Inducted into the VCU Hall of Fame in 2009, Sisisky was part of 840 Rams basketball games prior to his retirement in 2008.

  Perhaps overshadowed is the fact that Sisisky was also the longtime radio voice of Randolph-Macon football as well as high school and youth athletics around the Richmond area. Regardless of the level of athletics that Sisisky was involved in, he gave it an equal effort. For the past 32 years, the Central Virginia area airwaves have been filled with the voice of Sisisky broadcasting high school athletics, with a concentrated effort going towards his alma mater, Petersburg High School.

  It was at Petersburg where freelance reporter Jim Ridolphi first came to know Sisisky. “He used to crawl up a rickety old scaffold to broadcast the football games when the school didn’t even have bleachers,” Ridolphi said. “He really gave his heart and soul to his job, and no one prepared better than Terry.

  “I began working with him while he was doing Petersburg basketball and football games,” Ridolphi said. “It wasn’t a glamorous assignment, but Terry approached it with his typical enthusiastic professionalism.”

  And it is the people who met Sisisky who are most blessed because with even the briefest encounter he had a way of making a person feel like a longtime friend.

  Rarely seen without a joke or a smile, Sisisky brightened a press box in he same way his voice lightened the airwaves. “More than a great sportscaster, Terry was a great human being,” Ridolphi said. “He was a credit to his community, his profession and his family, and my deepest sympathies are extended to the latter.”

  For 15 years Sisisky was the voice of R-MC football and made an immediate impression on current head coach Pedro Arruza. “(Terry) was one of the first people that I met with when I started doing interviews,” Arruza said. “I just thought we had a really good relationship.

  “I really enjoyed working with him. I always thought Terry was very passionate about what he was doing. Always really upbeat. Always fun to be around. Had a lot of energy.

  “That’s the way I’m always going to remember him,” Arruza said. “Just a fun guy to work with. A fun guy to be around.”

  Since becoming Sports Information Director at Randolph-Macon in 2005, Chris Kilcoyne often worked closely with Sisisky. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve grown to love the guy over the last five years,” Kilcoyne said. “To know Terry is to love him. He cared so much about whatever game he was doing whether it be us, VCU or I think he did Little League baseball. He spent as much time with that as he did us or VCU.”

  And Sisisky’s dedication to his job was evident in the passion he showed during broadcast of whatever team he covered. “He was a die-hard Yellow Jacket fan,” Kilcoyne said. “He never went here but he lived and died with the team.”

  One lasting memory for Kilcoyne will be Sisisky’s 2008 broadcast of R-MC’s trip to rival Hampden-Sydney for a game that would decide the Old Dominion Athletic Conference championship.

  With 1:19 to play, the Tigers scored what appeared to be a go ahead touchdown only to have it called back on a holding penalty. On the next play R-MC’s Tristan Carr sacked H-SC quarterback Cory Sedlar, stripped the ball and ran it back 65-yards for a TD to cap the 31-21 Yellow Jacket win.

“His call, when we did that fumble return for a touchdown that kind of sealed the game, I’ll never forget that,” Kilcoyne said. “I think people in Ashland heard him screaming he was so excited.”