KITSAP SUN | Kevin MacGeorge (well-known as K Mac) has been living and working around sports since graduating from North Mason High School in 1980. It's something that gives him pleasure and his passion hasn't let up for being "married" to a microphone and helping out in community sports.
Maybe others would have backed off and turned their attention to some other work. Not K Mac. He keeps chugging away at what gives him joy and will continue to be the voice at Olympic College basketball and volleyball and local high school football and basketball games on KITZ Radio and streamed on ISPNSports.com.
He also does a weekly podcast on KITZ that is then placed on ISPNSports. He will continue to do this until a commitment to family -‑ his mother Sandy Bushnell, his No. 1 fan and supporter -- draws him to Florida in a few years.
Right now, K Mac is treading water. He had hip surgery recently and is in rehab. Once he is good to go, K Mac will be back on the go as a server at Applebee's in Silverdale, where he has been for 22 years, scheduled around his busy broadcast duties.
Funny thing is the 61-year-old K Mac has a long history of work, dating back to when he graduated from North Mason in 1980. It was at North Mason where he played three years of football at defensive tackle for coach Phil Pugh and a year of basketball until an ankle injury stopped that.
He worked at Gold Mountain Golf Course through his high school days, picking up range balls, washing golf carts, and in summers mowing the grass and changing the pins on greens and T-boxes.
"I had free golf and worked to get my handicap down to single digits," K Mac says. "I can't wait until I get my hip back and play at Rolling Hills."
An early marriage produced a daughter, Shari, who manages storage units in Las Vegas, and a grandson, Jayson James (JJ).
In the late 1980s, K Mac decided he wanted to be a disc jockey, so he went to a two-year broadcasting school in Seattle and got his first radio job at 1250 KFOX ("The Beat of the Fox"), one of the earliest hip-hop stations in the Northwest.
K Mac started out at KFOX doing a lot of editing, and then one day he was asked if he wanted to be the sideline reporter for a high school football game at Memorial Stadium.
He was tasked with blowing up a 15-foot-tall inflatable fox and hanging around the entrance with it. He liked the gig, but it wasn't like he was making a lot of money.
"There was no money for the gig," K Mac says. "I was broke with what they were paying me."
It was a start, though, for what was to come and continues. There were restaurant gigs along the way, including at Bremerton's Lakeshore Inn, where he worked as a cocktail server and made enough money just to get by in life.
It was at this point K Mac seriously thought about going to work at the shipyard, but he would have had to give up broadcasting.
"If I got a job in the shipyard my idea of being a broadcaster would go out the window," K Mac says. "It wasn't something I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to go on my terms, follow my dream of being a broadcaster."
He got into restaurant management, running a Tacoma Sheri's. It didn't take too long to grow dissatisfied. Working 14 hours a day tends to do that to a person.
"I wasn't having any fun and making no money," he says.
On New Year's Eve of 1994 he walked into a company party at the restaurant, and was greeted by his boss with "Happy New Year." K Mac dug into his pocket, found his restaurant keys, tossed them to his boss, returned the "Happy New Year," and walked out of the restaurant. He was gone, gone.
He then managed a restaurant at Thun Field Airport near Puyallup, living in a small cabin on Tanwax Lake for $100 a month, cable TV included.
"I saved a ton of money," K Mac says.
Next he worked for Jim Portune, who was sports information director at The Evergreen State College, doing play-by-play for volleyball, soccer and women's basketball, and color analysis for men's basketball with broadcaster Gary Hill Jr., who now is executive producer and engineer for Seattle Mariners games (he filled in recently as radio play-by-play guy when long time regular announcer Rick Rizzs was injured).
He came back to Bremerton and worked at the Keg Restaurant and did a KITZ Radio sports show with Portune, and in 2001 went to work at Applebee's.
Then Barry Janusch, longtime athletic director at Olympic College, called him. He was looking for somebody to do the public address for men and women's basketball and volleyball. K Mac accepted the offer, and he is still there doing his thing.
"Kevin Mac is still our guy for the indoor stuff," says Janusch. "We really don't need him for baseball. We stream every home game."
That doesn't diminish the value of K Mac.
"K Mac is a good guy," says Janusch. "He's very reliable and does a good job. He's a busy dude. He does a radio show, high school football and basketball games, even does City League (Bremerton) Park and recreation games at Sheridan Park and Kitsap Peewee football championship games."
That's K Mac, filling in the small gaps of coverage wherever the gaps appear. He figures he does 15 high school football and 20 basketball games a year, plus all the work for OC.
When the Kitsap BlueJackets were still a thing and playing in the wooden bat West Coast League, K Mac did the public address for them (2005-2012).
