"Carl, how important is making your fifth Olympic team to you?" I raised my voice to question one of the greatest track athletes of all time, Carl Lewis.
Journalists from around the world were scribbling away in the media center at Atlanta's new Olympic Stadium. We were there to cover the U.S. Olympic Track Trials. Of the hundred or so reporters in the room, just three of us were women.
I was toward the back, competing with the shouted questions of other reporters. Lewis looked my way.
"It would be a huge accomplishment. Even though I failed to qualify in the 100 meters, I still feel I am in the best shape of my life and will make it in the long jump."
I gave my producer and cameraman a knowing look. It was no Charles Barkley quip, but we had the quote we needed.
Welcome to the reality of being a woman in sports: In a room of 100 men, you are going to stand out. It means that you better be good; people are watching--and some are just waiting for you to make a mistake.
As a female TV sportscaster, I come to you midway through a revolution. We are past the days when you never saw a woman reporting sports on television or when women weren't allowed in locker rooms. But there still is a long way to go.
Take where I work. Of 18 sports anchors with CNN and our new 24-hour sports network, CNNSI, only three are women. And this is a progressive place to work. When CNN hired me two years ago, many staffers looked apprehensively at the one female sports anchor already working in the department. Was she going to be fired? She wasn't. It turns out the network was ready to have two of us. Funny thing, no one worried about any of the male anchors when a new man was hired a few months later.
I came to CNN eager to make the switch from TV news to sports. After eight years as a nightly news reporter in Santa Barbara and Phoenix, I had grown tired of the natural disaster/grisly murder-of-the-week beat, sticking my microphone in front of grieving parents and asking, "How does it feel?"
But the transition to sports wasn't easy. Some men are hardly shy about letting women know we are not welcome in the club. When I was working in Phoenix, one of the local anchors explained to me, "Look, sports is a brotherhood and you'll obviously never fit in."
I'm happy to be proving him wrong--and enjoying the perks of the sports beat. I've rushed the field at the end of the Super Bowl, delivered live courtside reports at the NBA playoffs and spent two weeks in St. Petersburg, Russia, as the "kiss-and-cry" reporter interviewing figure skaters who came off the ice and invariably burst into tears as they accepted air kisses and awaited their marks. And those are just a few highlights from last year.
Most people want to know: Do you go into the locker room? Yes, I do, and yes, it is strange. It's awkward enough doing your job when the people you are trying to interview are stark naked. Now imagine approaching an international sports star while he is toweling off and asking him, on camera, what it was like to blow the biggest game of his life. (Incredibly awkward, sure, but still better than pestering the parents of a murder victim.)
As a woman in a man's world, I've learned that I better know what I'm talking about. If I mispronounce the name of Brett Favre or Jim Harbaugh, you can be certain I'll be judged more harshly than my male counterpart. Some viewers will mutter: "She doesn't know what she's doing."
The rules may change as women assume a larger role in all aspects of pro sports. Just look at last summer's Olympic Games. Some of the biggest stories were the gold medals won by U.S. women in basketball, softball and soccer. Think of the millions of little girls who watched those performances on television. Now they have sports role models like no generation before them.
These girls are the future sports stars and fans that TV executives count on. As more women start competing, you can be sure the executives will see new opportunities to make money. This means more women's sports on television and, as a natural extension, more women at the anchor desk--and in the locker room.
As for that anchor who explained to me that sports is a "brotherhood"--he's still in Phoenix. But another Phoenix anchor recently left town to join us at CNN sports. And you know what? She and I went out to celebrate. There certainly is room for more than one of us at the desk.
Daryn Kagan, '85, is CNN's morning sports anchor. She also appears on CNNSI, the 24-hour sports network.
