Mike Kraft/MDN Larry McFall shows off the “Minot Hockey Bible,” a project him and former broadcast partner Rob Hall put together. The “Minot Hockey Bible” includes rosters, photos and statistics from every Minot High boys hockey season.

[gallery ids=”940029,940030,940031″ESPN had Howie Schwab back in the day, the human embodiment of a sports history encyclopedia.

Larry McFall is the Howie Schwab of Minot athletics.

The 67-year-old Minot native has probably forgotten more sports knowledge about Minot High, Minot State, the Minot Minotauros, tennis in the Minot community and the local dirt track scene than the combined sports expertise of the Magic City population.

“Everybody’s talking about me being the Minot sports guy and I do know an awful lot about Minot sports and I’ve got a good enough memory that’s still here,” McFall said. “I do know a lot about all the sports that have happened so I do have a lot of people coming up to me and asking about teams.”

Born and raised in Minot, McFall has lived a complete life, most of it in the world of sports, whether as a player on the tennis courts or the ice, a tennis coach, a salesman, a writer for the local newspaper, an operations manager for the now-defunct Minot Mallards, a radio announcer for Minot High hockey games, a broadcaster for a small wrestling organization as well as for dirt track racing spanning North Dakota and Canada, and even a substitute teacher.

He’s worn many different hats over the decades, but now you can find McFall most days at Maysa Arena, where he serves as the director of operations, responsible for the oversight of the venue’s three sheets of ice. McFall works every Minot High, Minot State and Minot Minotauros hockey game, serving as the ice resurfacer for those events. He began working at Maysa in 2007, where he started out mopping the bleachers and sweeping the hallways, but his career in the ice rink business first started in 1975 when he was still a high school junior at Minot High. He continued to work there as an ice resurfacer until 1982.

Growing up on the tennis court

While he has made a career for himself around the sport of hockey, McFall said his first true sports love didn’t involve skates and a hockey stick, but rather a tennis racket. McFall started playing when he was 12 and was a top tennis player growing up in the time of John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors, when the sport was experiencing a boom in popularity. McFall said that during the late ’70s, Minot had up to 84 tennis courts at one time and they would be so packed with potential players that you could wait all day just to play a single match.

“Everybody wanted in,” McFall said. “We started playing on a court at Oak Park that’s no longer there. It was changed after the flood of ’76. We learned at Oak Park and we’d go to the college courts whenever we could. Back then, even with 84 courts, you still couldn’t get on. You’d drive around to all these courts and they’d be so full and each court had a ball holder where you could drop your ball and when your ball got down to the bottom it was your turn for a court. You would wait forever to play.”

McFall was part of Minot High’s first tennis team when the school launched the program in the spring of 1976 under the guidance of coach Jerry Lyon, who went on to be inducted into the National Coaches Hall of Fame in 2012 and the Minot High School Hall of Fame the following year. He coached for 33 years, compiling a 778-221 record in duals, won eight state championships and 29 West Region titles. With the Magicians, McFall was the No. 5 player on the nine-team roster and ended up earning Minot State’s No. 1 singles designation as a freshman when he tried out for the Beavers, much to the dismay of Rick Stevens and Jim Bauer, who had been the top two singles players on the team before McFall’s arrival. They won the conference title his sophomore season and he and Mark Guy took second in district doubles in 1980 when he was a senior.

Tennis took up all of McFall’s free time. Not only was he a player, but he was also serving as the tennis coach for Bishop Ryan during his junior and senior years at Minot State. He would hit 150 serves every night and then do 30 minutes working on his rallying following practice before leading practice at Bishop Ryan. He also ran the recreation tennis program for Keith White when it first opened in 1977, setting up the courts and the schedules and would teach the adults at night, serving as the club pro.

McFall tried to make a career of it by participating in the Northwest Tennis Association satellite tournaments. A player could achieve their professional playing card, allowing them to play in low level pro tennis events in the Minneapolis area if they won enough of the satellite tournaments and scored enough points.

That’s where McFall’s tennis career went from promising to over in the blink of an eye. Leading 6-0, 2-0 in a semifinal match, McFall went to return a shot to his left near the front of the net. When he stretched out, he described the pain as if “someone had shoved a knife in my back.” McFall hit the surface and couldn’t get back to his feet without assistance, pain coursing through his body. He was forced to retire from the match and soon after hung up his tennis shoes for good. The diagnosis was years worth of damage done to the fifth and sixth vertebrae (C5 and C6) in McFall’s spine from both the movements of being a tennis player and a hockey goalie. The C5 and C6 are referred to as the “stress vertebrae” as they bear the brunt of the weight from the head and neck and are prone to disc bulging and nerve compression. McFall said that back then, there was nothing doctors could do for a back injury and surgery would only make things worse. Instead he was given a girdle as a back specialist told him there was nothing they could do for him.

Even as his back recovered enough to give him the ability to play again, he could no longer play tennis at the level he was accustomed and therefore decided to stop, moving on to a new chapter in his life. There would be plenty of chapters left in the book that is his life.

Finding his voice

McFall would find his new passion just before the turn of the new millennium, when he began calling races at Nodak Speedway in 1998. He was no stranger to the track, however, as long before he picked up a microphone, he was waving the checkered flag as the flagman beginning in 1987. He would serve as the flagman again in 1988, 1989, 1992 and 1993. Eventually, he was approached by Charlie Fox, whom he had a relationship with during their time calling a few Minot High hockey games on the radio together. Fox asked him if he would like to start calling the races with him at Nodak Speedway beginning in 1998, and McFall would fill that role until 2022. He and Fox worked together in the booth for six years and then he partnered with Lindsey Lawson from 2004-14 before rotating through a panel of people for the remaining eight years.

Nodak Speedway was far from the only racetrack that McFall would lend his voice to. He followed the Dakota Classic Modified Tour, sending him to tracks in Estevan, Williston, Rugby, Dickinson, Mandan and Jamestown. McFall became the full-time voice at the Williston Basin Speedway in 2004 when the track’s regular announcer, Ralph Lockwood, ran into a conflict calling Legion baseball games and asked McFall and Lawson if they would be interested in filling in for him from time to time. Eventually, it led to a full-time gig and he remained there for 18 years.

“I’ve been really blessed to have a talent to do announcing,” McFall said. “Some announcers just struggle. I’ve never had a problem talking to a bunch of people or in front of a bunch of people. The announcing thing was a good thing for me.”

McFall’s announcing north of the border at Estevan Motor Speedway didn’t last as long, but he was still behind the microphone for four or five years. He had heard rumors that the two regular announcers at the track were planning on quitting, so he and Lawson made the drive up north every other week to take the job. While Nodak Speedway hosted race nights every Sunday, Estevan and Williston rotated every Saturday. McFall and Lawson’s time at Estevan was cut short when the track found someone from the local area to take over.

McFall said he made $250 per night calling races.

Having one fewer thing to balance on his plate wasn’t necessarily a bad thing when McFall looks back, as it was a grind trying to keep up such a torrid schedule while also having his regular job.

“I’m 67 and everybody was always telling me I needed to cut back a little bit because I never had a day off,” McFall said. “I’d work here Monday through Friday and then drive to Williston to announce out there on a Saturday night and then Minot on a Sunday night and then right back here on Monday. I didn’t have a day off for like three years and I was kind of getting old and worn down, not really realizing how old I was getting until my son told me.”

Perhaps his most unique experience behind a microphone took place at a nearby Holiday Inn between 2000-04 when he worked for Northern Outlaw Wrestling under the leadership of Wade Williamson and Mark Holter. Williamson was a realtor and Holter was a deputy sheriff at the time when they started the business, setting up a wrestling ring on the volleyball court by the pool of the hotel. But they needed someone to announce the events. So McFall became the color commentator and Brett Loftis of BEK Sports did the play-by-play. McFall leaned heavily into his wrestling commentating persona.

“I was going to be flamboyant if I’m doing the color so I went and shopped at the Dollar Store and found these white two-way mirror glasses where I could see behind me and they’re just goofy, wrestling-type white glasses and then I always wore a suit and a tie and I would sit with Brett and I would be all over the good guys,” McFall said. “I was for the bad guys. I’m doing what they do on TV. I’m ripping them.”

The “Minot Hockey Bible”

If you didn’t fancy yourself a racing or wrestling fan, but did enjoy hockey in Minot, chances are you caught McFall’s voice on the radio. Before the radio gig, McFall did 12 years as the PA announcer for Minot High at All Seasons. From there, he and Rob Hall spent 10 years together as radio partners calling games for the Magicians.

During their time on the headsets, they realized that they needed something to fill the airtime during games when there was a break in the action. That’s where the idea for what eventually became known as the “Minot Hockey Bible” was born.

It was no small project to bring the hockey bible to life. It was a painstaking process that required almost all of their free time for roughly two years. McFall and Hall would work on it in his office at Maysa Arena, combing through every team roster they had collected from 1974 all the way through 2025 as well as all the statistics from those years.

McFall had been keeping all of the Minot High hockey programs since his junior year in high school all the way through the mid ’90s. He saved all the rosters and the team pictures from those years. Making his life a bit easier was Bob Gillen, who has run the North Dakota high school hockey website since 2000, providing score sheets for all the high school hockey games across the state. Gillen, who is also the manager at Maysa Arena, was inducted into the North Dakota Hockey Hall of Fame this year.

The only gap in time McFall and Hall had to fill spanned from 1993-2000, but luckily enough for the two of them, the Minot High coaches at the time were keeping those statistics, so they were able to track them down. With all the information at their disposal, it was time to start compiling.

“We spent two years on and off going to the library and digging all the stuff up from the ones that weren’t quite done in those days,” McFall said. “And then we also had to find 93-2000 before the website started and the coaches pretty much had that covered. That’s how we did it. We found it would be something that would be good to read off for broadcasts and it turned out to be something really good for the history of Minot High hockey. We were proud that we saved that and have all that now because all that information could have been lost or kicked around.”

Finding some of the stats from the early years required the use of microfilm from the library. They would look up the date of a game from the program they had in their possession, grab the microfilm from that date in The Minot Daily News, and write down the stats. McFall said stat-keeping wasn’t really a thing at the very beginning, as the team was playing outdoors during the inaugural season. Minot High had a statistician on hand the first year they moved indoors at All Seasons Arena, but they still had to rely on the game recaps from the newspaper to get the information they were looking for.

It was hard work, but McFall is proud of the Minot Hockey Bible that sits in his office. His favorite statistics to say over the air were the lifetime head-to-head records between the two teams facing off on the ice. It gave the audience a sense for the history of the two programs and who had had the upper hand in the past and the frequency in which the two teams met.

McFall no longer does any hockey announcing and admits to missing it, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t around the game that has given him so much joy over the decades. You can still see him at the rink at every Minot High, Minotauros and Minot State hockey game, driving the ice resurfacer during intermissions and ensuring the ice is in tip-top shape for every game.

There’s also an added bonus to the job he has at Maysa Arena.

“I’m fortunate enough to have my son working with me every day,” McFall said. “He’s the facilities manager. It’s kind of cool to be working with your kid every day. I know some dads who only see their sons at Christmas. I’m so happy I get to see mine every day.”

KISS and tell

But there is more to McFall than just sports. He has another love: the band KISS.

McFall isn’t just one of your run-of-the-mill KISS fans who knows them because of their iconic face paint and stage outfits and could maybe name you a few of their biggest hits. No, McFall is a member of the KISS army, and he’s got the receipts – literally and figuratively – to prove it.

The American rock band formed in 1973, and McFall saw his first KISS concert a year later when the New York City-based group came to Minot Municipal Auditorium on Nov. 12, 1974. Tickets were a little bit cheaper at the time, costing McFall and his friends $4.50 at the door. At the time, KISS had just released their first album and had begun touring earlier in the year in February.

“I would say there were 150, maybe 200 people there,” McFall said of the concert in Minot. “We got there late and walked right up in front of the stage. For the next hour and a half I was just like, ‘Wow, that guy just blew fire’ and that was cool. The first concert was probably the most memorable for me, but of course, they didn’t have the stuff they had at the end. Now they have all the fireworks. They had a few sparklers in Minot and that was about it. As far as the show goes, they are a lot better in later years than when they first started out, but that first show stuck in my mind. I got to see them in my hometown.”

KISS wasn’t done touring and McFall wasn’t done seeing them in concert. McFall has been to 33 more KISS concerts since that night, seeing them when they returned to North Dakota. McFall said he’s seen them play in Bismarck eight times and has also seen them in Grand Forks and Fargo, as well as the two occasions when KISS headlined the North Dakota State Fair in 2010 and 2016. Outside of North Dakota, he has attended shows in Minneapolis, Denver and Nebraska to name a few. The last KISS concert he attended was back in 2022 when he saw them in Grand Forks, and then again two days later in St. Paul. Tickets for those events cost a bit more than the $4.50 he paid the first time, with McFall having to shell out close to $300 for the show in St. Paul without the ability to simply walk up to the front row.

Back in high school, McFall and his friends took their fandom to another level, forming their own KISS-inspired band. With face paint and costumes, McFall and his friends formed the group in 1975 and played a few dances in town, but they did not become the next KISS. But they still had fun.

“I was a sophomore in high school when they came out with their first album and here’s this album with guys with their faces painted,” McFall said. “I listened to the music, liked the music. I had already been a hard rock guy with Led Zeppelin and the early rock bands. KISS came along in 74 and I just liked the concept of their theatrics. Spitting the fire and the drumset that goes up and down and Paul Stanley busts his guitar every day and Gene was going to spit blood and blow fire and their music was good, so I started turning into a fan.”

McFall did boycott the band for more than a decade when KISS opted to abandon their signature makeup and costumes from 1983-96, but renewed his fan card in 1996 when they returned to their trademark look.

With hockey set to get underway at Maysa Arena this weekend with the start of the Minot Minotauros’ regular season, fans can be assured that they will see McFall around the rink. And whether you want to talk about sports, music, a potential job as an ice resurfacer or anything in between, McFall will provide you with a wealth of information.

Half living, breathing almanac. Half do-it-all-broadcaster. Full legend. That is Larry McFall.