FROM A DISTANCE, Mary Nickles is exactly what you'd expect of a TV anchorwoman. She's got the perfectly coifed hair, the makeup just so, the handsome face, the steady voice, and of course the smashing wardrobe.
For instance, for this evening's newscast she is wearing a Classiques jacket, a silk blouse, a beaded necklace and art deco earrings. At least that's what you see on TV. Then the 6 o'clock news ends, and Nickles stands up - and up and up and up - and the rest of her is wearing, hmmm, kneepads by Tiger, tennis shoes by Nike and a pair of Navy blue shorts by Champion.You're thinking: a) Nickles needs a new wardrobe consultant; b) Nickles didn't finish getting dressed this morning; c) Nickles is running off to join the roller derby.
No, actually, this can all be explained, but not right now. Nickles - KUTV's 6-foot-tall anchorwoman - has places to go, so get the heck out of her way. She dashes into the bathroom to change into a T-shirt, then races to the parking lot, hops in her car, and speeds off across town, stretching her arms and remembering to remove the earrings en route to her other job.
You know Nickles as one of Channel 2's talking heads by day, but at night she becomes a professional volleyball player, reporting to practice thrice weekly immediately after signing off the air. She is a middle hitter with the Utah Predators, one of five teams in the National Volleyball Association.
"I love volleyball," she says simply.
No kidding. Nickles, a former collegiate player, has continued to play the game at the club level every year since graduating from college in 1985, even though it cramps her schedule. She anchors three broadcasts a day - at noon, 5 and 6 o'clock - which means she's done with work at 6:30, the same time practice begins. To hasten her getaway for practice, she wears the shorts-kneepads-tennis shoes getup during the 5 and 6 o'clock reports, although no one would know it since all you see on TV is her head and shoulders.
"At first I got a lot of doubletakes (on the set), but now everyone knows I must have practice," she says.
After the news ends, she dashes into the bathroom to change the top half and races away to practice. "I'm the only one who shows up for practice wearing lipstick," she says.
The hectic schedule notwithstanding, Nickles wouldn't have it any other way. Almost the first thing she did when she arrived in Salt Lake City three years ago was call Annette Cottle, a former All-America and club coach.
"I just moved here, I'm a middle blocker and I'm six feet tall," she announced. Cottle quickly invited her to join her team, the Dig-Its, one of Utah's top club teams. Last summer they won the gold medal at the Utah Summer Games, and Nickles was named the USG's Female Athlete of the Year.
When the NVA started a franchise in Utah this fall, Cottle was made coach. She was given four national team players, but that left six other slots to fill with local players. She invited Nickles to try out. Nickles dashed back and forth between the studio and tryouts, hurriedly redoing her makeup and hair for nightly news broadcasts. Her new night job pays $75 per game.
"She had a rough start," says Cottle. "She had a sprained ankle and a pulled quadricep, but now she's at full strength. She had a great practice Monday. She'll play a lot as a server, defender and passer."
After sitting out the first game, Nickles, who wears No. 2 (what else?), played in the Predators' second game last week, side by side with and across the net from former and future Olympians and national-team stars.
"I didn't fall down, I didn't get hit in the face, and I was in the right place at the right time," she says dryly. "It went well."
Nickles, who will be 32 this month, has been playing volleyball since she was 14. Raised in Seattle, she was the eighth of nine children in a close, tall, athletic family. Her father, Tom, a former semi-pro basketball player, worked three jobs at Christmas time and dug out a basement beneath the family home to care of all his children, not to mention several temporary foster children. Her late mother, June, was a state legislator. Still, money was tight, and scholarships were a necessity to attend college.
Six children earned scholarships (and degrees), five of them for athletics. Three boys played college basketball (one played professionally in Europe) and two girls played volleyball. Nickles was a three-sport athlete in high school, lettering 11 times. During her senior year she blew out a knee and broke her arm, scaring away recruiters from several name schools. She accepted a scholarship from nearby Bellevue Community College, where she played basketball and volleyball, then took a volleyball scholarship at Lewis-Clark State.
Upon graduation, she began her journalism career with an $800-a-month job in Yakima, Wash., which eventually led her to Salt Lake City. Through it all, thanks in part to support from her husband, Kent, she has continued to pursue her volleyball career with a certain intensity (her breaks at work often consist of weightlifting and a walk on a stairclimber).
"I'm having a blast," says Nickles. "I'm not as sharp as these girls who just got out of college, but I can hang with them."
Even if she is wearing lipstick.