Meet Mike Williams: The Voice of the EVP Tour

If EVP Tour announcer Mike Williams ever forgets where he is amid his many travels, he can get one clue by looking down at his own shoes.

In addition to announcing beach volleyball matches, Williams works the monster trucks circuit, pro boxing bouts and charity events.

“I bounce around from shoes full of mud to shoes full of a sandy beach, to wearing shoes that go great with a tuxedo,” Williams said with a laugh.

The voice of the EVP Tour is used to getting his feet, and hands, dirty as a multi-tasker doing his own stage production and floor management before the events begin – but nothing compares to his first job in high school.

“I worked on a family farm, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,” he said. “I did everything from riding fences and fixing them, to shoveling every nasty thing. The farm raised pigs, especially very angry, 400-pound sows, and I worked with them through their mating times. There was no better way to build a strong, grounded work ethic than being on a farm, chasing and being chased by huge pigs that are not in a good mood.”

Williams got his start at announcing at the University of Iowa, covering a radio station’s weekend shift; but also landing with a roommate that had a disc-jockey business. He graduated and moved to Chicago, eventually hanging out at the volleyball courts on the north shore and meeting EVT Tour Commissioner Ross Balling.

Williams now announces EVP Tour events, in addition to managing branding images for the Tour and co-hosting its TV show.

“The common perception is that being a good announcer comes down to the voice,” Williams said. “People say if someone has a good voice they must be a good announcer – or the opposite that if they have a bad voice they must be bad. All of that couldn’t be further from the truth. A great announcer keeps the event flowing on schedule and rolls with the punches on any issues that come up. The secret is that you have to do it all without the fans seeing, or feeling, that something might be going wrong in the background.”

Mike Dauernheim, 2006 EVP player of the year, said Williams’ style works well for the tour.

“What I like is that Mike doesn't view himself as bigger than the tour,” Dauernheim said. “He has a big-time voice without a big-time ego. He knows most of the players on the tour so he can provide great personal side notes about players, not because it was handed to him as part of a script, but because he knows them.”

Williams said his favorite parts of the EVP Tour are the players, the city vs. city concept, and the pre- and post-event parties.

“The EVP is a very personalized tour,” he said. “The players are real; they have other careers and come in on the weekend because they want to compete first and foremost, but to also have a good time with players from across the country while representing their city. It’s their disposition and personalities, how they interact with the crowd at a level in pro sports that’s unprecedented. They make it like a day at the beach for everyone.”

Asked what was the strangest thing he’s seen in beach volleyball, the man who likes Ray Charles music and the movie, Napoleon Dynamite, said: “Three to four years ago, at Manhattan Beach, more teams registered than the tour thought would, so it ran late. The men’s final began in the final twilight moments and it was pitch black before it finished. They’d serve sky balls 30 to 40 feet in the air, and you couldn’t see it come back down until the grenade plopped in their lap. Everyone was laughing, having fun, and they thought they had a strategy to beat their opponent in the dark, but really it seemed like they were just trying to survive.”

The EVP Tour makes it first West Coast swing of the season on June 2 in Huntington Beach before it next heads to Santa Barbara and Hermosa.

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Mike Williams, EVP Tour announcer