PAST GRAND MARSHALLS

RON SHURTS
Owner of the AZ Rattlers

Ron is a proven leader and a recognized visionary and innovator within the financial services industry.

He is the CEO & Co-Founder of Annexus, the nation’s leading independent retirement planning product design and distribution company.

Annexus has won multiple awards for innovation. In March of 2024, Ron rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange in celebration with his partners in bringing some of the financial service industry’s most innovative products to market.

Shurts is an entrepreneur at heart. In his 30 years in the financial services industry, he has launched and grown multiple successful companies.

Besides building powerhouse businesses, Ron is an enthusiastic sports fan, he has passionately supported the Arizona Rattlers as a season ticket holder since their very first game in 1992. In 2011, he took on the role of majority owner and CEO of the Rattlers, leading to remarkable achievements for the team. Under Ron's leadership, the Rattlers have celebrated numerous victories, including five National Championships in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017, and 2024 and nine Western Conference Championships. Most notably, the Rattlers brought home the coveted 2024 Indoor Football League National Championship, further solidifying their legacy in the sport.

In July of 2024, Ron became an investor in Venezia FC, purchasing part of the soccer team which won a playoff game that led to the club's promotion to the biggest soccer league in Italy, Lega Serie A.

Ron is deeply committed to his community and is actively involved with the Phoenix Suns Charities, Phoenix Children’s Hospital, the Patrick Peterson Foundation for Success and the Arians Family Foundation.

He and his wife, Mia, enjoy spending time with their two sons, AJ and Jaxon.

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JAIME CERRETA
News Anchor and Host of Jaime's Local Love Podcast

Jaime Cerreta loves Arizona. A true hometown girl whose family’s roots are deep-seated in the Valley of the Sun, Jaime envisioned a career in journalism from the time she was a little girl. Since then, she has been passionately pursuing her dreams.

Jaime is a successful product of the Scottsdale Unified School District, including attending Chaparral High School. After graduating from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Broadcast Journalism, she went on to build her professional resume with her first TV job as a one-man-band reporter in Joplin, MO, before moving to Springfield, MO; Beaumont, TX; and Oklahoma City, OK. In 2013, she returned home to become part of Arizona’s Family.

The responsibility of her craft is one Jaime does not take lightly. She gets in the trenches for the sake of credible storytelling! She’s covered hurricanes, ice storms, blizzards, tornadoes — and even reported live from inside a massive monsoon dust storm for Arizona’s Family. That viral video is worth a Google. Jaime is proud to have won several Emmy Awards with her Arizona’s Family team for their coverage of monsoon storms, protests in Downtown Phoenix and the WM Phoenix Open.

During her six and a half years anchoring Good Morning Arizona weekends, she created her passion project — a weekly franchise dubbed “Jaime’s Local Love.” This program shines the spotlight on Arizona’s local business owners. She is greatly inspired by their perseverance, dedication and true love of their work. Jaime’s admiration of the entrepreneurial spirit stems from her own family — the Cerretas have been handmaking candy at the Cerreta Candy Company in Glendale for more than 50 years!

Jaime has worked evenings, weekends and mornings at Arizona’s Family and is currently on-air weekday evenings. She is honored to do the work she loves, in the city she loves, with the people she loves.

“It’s a privilege to work in the community I grew up in,” she says. “I feel like one of the luckiest people in TV news. I truly love the people I work with and the people I serve.”

When not behind the anchor desk or traversing the town uncovering the next hidden gem to highlight on “Jaime’s Local Love,” you can find Jaime checking out a new hot spot in town, supporting her sister and brother-in-law’s Loot N’ Booty BBQ team, hanging with her INCREDIBLE parents, or making waves at the nearest beach — preferably in San Diego or Rocky Point!

From AZ Family

2020

Al McCoy

McCoy has been a Glendale resident for over 45 years. He has been called the dean of NBA play-by-play announcers and is in his 48th memorable season as “The Voice of the Suns,” nearly the length of the franchise’s existence and the longest consecutive run as a team’s broadcaster in NBA history. At halftime of the game on March 3, 2017, McCoy earned the team’s highest honor as he became the 15th person inducted into the Phoenix Suns Ring of Honor.

McCoy first hit the air during a preseason game on September 27, 1972, and has been synonymous with Suns basketball ever since. From “Shazam” to “Zing Go the Strings” to “Heartbreak Hotel,” McCoy has cultivated an unparalleled style.

McCoy will forever be remembered for his call in the 1976 Suns-Celtics NBA Finals at Boston Garden when he had to fling an inebriated fan off his lap as he was describing “The Shot Heard ‘Round The World” by Garfield Heard that sent the game into the third of three overtimes.

The 2019-20 season marks his 48th as he calls play-by-play action on Arizona Sports Radio and the Suns radio network. McCoy’s tenure with the Suns is the longest consecutive run with one team among NBA broadcasters in league history. His many contributions to the sport were recognized when he received the 18th Annual Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame during Enshrinement Weekend in September 2007 in Springfield, Mass. The Suns honored him with the Al McCoy Media Center, dedicated in October 2007.

In 2019, the readers of Phoenix Magazine named McCoy the best play-by-play announcer in their annual “Best of the Valley” issue for the 21st consecutive year. He’s the only broadcaster to win the award since it debuted in 1999. McCoy was honored with a Silver Circle Award from the Arizona chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the House of Broadcasting (a radio and television museum). He also became the first play-by-play announcer to be inducted into the Arizona Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame on Oct. 19, 2004.

McCoy’s broadcasting career began in 1951 at KJFJ Radio in Webster City, Iowa when he was a freshman at Drake University. In 1958, he arrived in Arizona to do play-by-play for the Triple-A Phoenix Giants baseball club. He has also covered Phoenix Roadrunners hockey, Arizona State football and basketball and filled in as a backup for the Arizona Diamondbacks. McCoy added a call of the Phoenix Mercury to his distinguished resume, providing play-by-play on NBA TV for a playoff game on the Mercury’s run to the 2014 WNBA title.

A native of Williams, Iowa, a tiny farming community, McCoy was a member of his high school basketball team and was influenced by legendary broadcasters Harry Caray, Bert Wilson and Jack Brickhouse. He received his degree in drama-speech from Drake University and performed graduate work at the University of Iowa. In 1994, McCoy received Drake’s Alumni Achievement Award and in 2015, he was included in an interactive exhibit at the Iowa Hall of Pride.

He and his beloved wife Georgia, a Valley artist who passed away in 2012, have three sons: Mike, and twins Jay and Jerry. A culinary critic, he is the club’s expert on gourmet restaurants around the league. McCoy is an accomplished jazz pianist.