TJ grad Mayne will dance with the stars

By CASEY OLSON

The Mirror

Thomas Jefferson High School graduate and current ESPN anchor Kenny Mayne will be a part of the hit television series Dancing with the Stars starting Thursday night on ABC.

Mayne, who was an all-league quarterback for the Raiders before playing at Wenatchee Valley Community College and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, will team with professional dancer Andrea Hale on the show. The show will air at 8 p.m.

Dancing with the Stars will feature 10 couples who will each perform either a ballroom or Latin American dance and be judged by pros and viewers. The couple with the lowest combined score from the judges and the viewers will be eliminated from the competition.

All of the music within the competition is performed by a live band, and are arrangements of contemporary tracks and well-loved classics. Between each live show, the couples train intensively learning new dances every week which are filmed and edited into weekly “behind the scenes” packages for the live shows.

The couples have already embarked on intense training in preparation for the first live show on Thursday.

Dancing with the Stars was last summer’s most successful series, averaging 16.8 million viewers weekly. The show was won by soap opera star Kelly Monaco.

Mayne, a 1977 TJ grad, began his television career at KLVX-TV (a PBS affiliate) in Las Vegas. From 1982 (upon leaving college) until 1990 Mayne worked at local stations before serving as a freelance reporter and field producer for ESPN from 1990 to 1994.

He has served a variety of roles in more than 10 years with ESPN, hosting such shows as SportsCenter, RPM 2Night, and 2 Minute Drill. He currently provides features to SportsCenter and The Mayne Event, segments to Sunday NFL Countdown, as well as hosting ESPN’s horse racing coverage.

Other celebrity dancers will include Lisa Rinna, George Hamilton, Giselle Fernandez, Master P, Tia Carrere, Tatum O’Neal, Jerry Rice, Stacy Keibler and Drew Lachey.

Sports editor Casey Olson: 925-5565, sports@fedwaymirror.com

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