Rowan students crowded the King Auditorium in Bozorth Hall for the return of Philadelphia 76ers play-by-play announcer Kate Scott.
Scott’s return to campus was the latest event dedicated to celebrating National Girls and Women in Sports Day, which is celebrated on the first day of February. The event was hosted by Rowan Sports Communications professor Kate Harman.
“I think it’s really important to spend however long highlighting the experiences of women in sports, and I think until things change in society and media coverage,” Harman said. “Women get 4% of TV coverage that men do and that’s just professional.”
Scott described how she got started in writing about sports and the women in the field who inspired her.
“I would see the blind lines of female journalists writing about the San Francisco Giants and San Francisco 49ers because I grew up in California,” Scott said. “And I thought, ‘Oh, I could write about sports.’ So that’s why I started writing for my high school newspaper. But I didn’t think I could do anything more than that because, again, I never saw myself in anything.”
Harman prepared a series of questions about Scott’s experiences as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Scott has been an outstanding voice for the gay community in sports, one she takes pride in as it inspires the next generation of LGBTQIA+ sports professionals.
“I hope in a few years, I will not be seen as the woman who’s calling Sixers games or as the game woman. I hope people say ‘Man the Sixers television broadcaster is awesome, I love her.’ I want to be seen as a broadcaster who also happens to be all these other things,” Scott said.
Since joining the Sixers at the beginning of the 2021-2022 season, Scott remains one of two full-time women play-by-play announcers in men’s professional sports, joining Lisa Byington who broadcasts for the Milwaukee Bucks.
“I think there are so many different groups of people that benefit from hearing them [Scott and Byington] every single game,” Harman said. “I think we’re going to see a lot of kids do what they do because of them.”
Scott touched on the balance of worrying about the audience’s perception and being herself on air.
“As you get older you will care less about what other people think,” Scott said. “But at the same time, I have found being my authentic self is when I am the most free. And when I am the most free I am the most successful.”
The event was very successful and gave a lot of students advice which they can apply to their careers. Scott even stayed after the event had concluded to take pictures and talk to students.
“She didn’t have to do that,” Harman said. “This was her first day off, it’s the All-Star break, they had a game the night before and she took 45 minutes to talk to our students.”
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