Bangor television station WVII (Channel 7) has a new sports director.

Although he’s a Maine native with family roots in the York area that go back more than a century, he may have to answer more than a few questions about his name.

Evans Boston, a Syracuse University graduate from York, will be on the job next week after working in Zanesville, Ohio, last year.

He will replace Tim Baier, who left to take a producing job in Washington D.C.

“I guess his family owns a saltwater taffy stand on York Beach that goes back 100 years or so,” said George Thomas, WVII operations manager. “He’s excited about coming here.”

Thomas said Boston was chosen from a group of more than 50 applicants.

“We watched a lot of tapes and went through a lot of resumes,” Thomas said. “His appearance on air and his coverage style were impressive.”

Shortly after college graduation, Boston worked in Dalton, Ga., at WDNN and crossed paths with WLBZ-TV (Ch. 2) sports anchor John Smist, whom he has remained friends with.

Boston, who won a Hearst (college journalism) Award for a feature he did while he was sports director of the Syracuse radio station, will team with Palmyra native Elgin Traylor, who has been with WVII for five years, and supplement what has already been a big push by the station to beef up its high school basketball coverage.

“I certainly think we can put a different face on our sports coverage with our Courtside Coverage basketball reports,” Thomas said. “It’s like our Friday Night Sports Blitz football show, but it’s spread out over a week as opposed to one night.”

Courtside Coverage was the brainchild of Traylor and former sports director Ted Lombardi.

“It developed a bit too late to let us use it last season,” said Traylor. “My initial goal when I was selling this idea was that every team is made up of three or four towns and that’s three or four towns that are tuning in. One night we had eight games and we had 11 teams featured on that night.

“We cover as many games as we can every night, having highlights from at least one game a night.”

They also run a graphic almost every night which tells how many boys (34) and girls teams (32) have been covered along with the number of total games (68). In addition, WVII picks a male and female player of the week each week.

“It’s been good. We’ve had positive response from advertisers and viewers alike,” Thomas said.

NESN goes Inside Hockey East

Inside Hockey East, a weekly, features-oriented, 30-minute program, starts its second season tonight in conjunction with the start of New England Sports Network’s Hockey East telecast schedule.

The show will initially air at 6:30 p.m. with the Vermont-New Hampshire game following at 7 p.m. It will re-air at 11:30 p.m.

NESN is airing eight episodes of the show this season, up from six last year. The show is produced by Cod Rock Media Productions, a company based in Kittery and run by current University of Maine hockey radio voice Dan Hannigan and former WVII-TV sports director Eric Frede.

Hockey East goes live and online

Hockey East has formally launched its live, online scoreboard, which was used on an experimental basis last year. It features real-time scoring and statistical highlights from all games involving league teams. It goes into operation whenever two ore more games involving HE games are occurring.

The scoreboard can be accessed through hockeyeastonline.com, which will feature a link to a printable scoreboard, including additional statistics, and usually remains posted until 10:30 p.m. most days.

Trophy Tour II

The Joe and Jerry Tour will be in town in less than two weeks and they’re bringing some championship hardware with them.

What began as a special offseason hot stove baseball event has become an annual tradition. Boston Red Sox radio announcers Joe Castiglione and Jerry Trupiano will be back in Bangor for the third straight year for “An Evening with Joe and Jerry” at the Bangor Auditorium Civic Center on Jan. 17 at 7 p.m.

The guys with the World Series championship rings will have the 2004 World Series Trophy with them as well. This will be the second time the trophy has graced the Civic Center as it was part of the Sox offseason victory tour in 2004-05.

Admission is free, but attendees need tickets, which are available through contests and giveaways by the official sponsors: the Bangor Daily News and Bangor all-sports radio station WZON (620 AM).

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600 or at aneff@bangordailynews.net