Not just another ‘Mic Man’ — Scott’s a broadcasting pioneer
Between leading cheers at a Cal men’s basketball game at Haas Pavilion, Kate Scott was fixing her hair in the bathroom when an alum stopped her.
“Thank you for what you’re doing,” the woman told Scott. “If leading the cheers would’ve been possible for me when I was a student here, I would have loved to have done that.”
Scott, then a Cal junior, hadn’t thought about being a trailblazer a year earlier when she became the first female member of the “Mic Men” — the group that wears navy blue dress shirts, yellow ties and khakis as it directs the Bears’ student section in chants. Leading cheers looked like fun, and she wanted to enjoy her college experience.
But over the past 17 years — as she became the first woman to call an NFL game on radio, the first to call football for Pac12 Networks and the first to do playbyplay on an allfemale NHL telecast in the U.S. — Scott often reflected on what the woman in Haas Pavilion told her. Just by doing her job, Scott can inspire young women who might not
think they can succeed in the maledominated industry.
When Scott graduated from Cal in 2005, she didn’t consider calling playbyplay because she never saw a woman do it. Now, as she becomes the first female playbyplay voice for a Warriors game when Golden State hosts the Bulls on Monday night, the 37yearold is considered one of the Bay Area’s top broadcasters.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Scott was calling games in eight sports leagues at various levels throughout the country. Now the morning cohost on 95.7 FM, she crams in prep work for broadcasts between her radio show, games and flights. After four days in Boston calling the National Women’s Hockey League playoffs, Scott took an early flight to San Francisco on Sunday so she could be ready to call the BullsWarriors game the following night for 95.7, Golden State’s flagship station.
This will be Scott’s first time calling a basketball game on radio, and she must overhaul the style she developed for TV. With listeners unable to see the action, she must be more detailoriented.
Scott started taking notes on the Bulls and Warriors weeks ago, studying broadcasts of their games and rehearsing calls. Her goal is to deliver a mistakefree performance that leaves no doubt: Women can call games as well as the men.
“A lot of viewers, fans and listeners don’t know how many qualified women are doing this,” said Scott, who will be joined on the allfemale crew by Mary Murphy and Kerith Burke. “We think it is very important for one specific night during Women’s Empowerment Month to let the audience hear how well we do this. Visibility matters.
“It’s time you give women a shot, more than just on this one night.”
When NBC asked Scott to be part of the allfemale NHL telecast last spring, she was reluctant. Having an allfemale broadcast to celebrate Women’s History Month felt like a publicrelations stunt. But when network executives explained that it could bring awareness to the work female sports broadcasters are doing and inspire young women, Scott agreed to call the game.
In recent days, as she saw tweets and comments calling the allfemale broadcast for the BullsWarriors game a “PR gimmick,” she thought about why she got into calling playbyplay much later than many of her male colleagues. While men called games for Cal’s studentrun TV and radio stations, Scott worked internships that could help her land a job as a sideline reporter. That was the only sports broadcast position she’d seen women doing.
After graduating from Cal with a communications degree, Scott waited tables at the Sunny Side Café in Berkeley, poured wine at the Darioush winery in Napa and worked in the wine aisle at Andronico’s market in Berkeley — all while holding down an internship at Alice 97.3. It wasn’t until five years later, when one of her old producers asked her to call high school football games for Comcast Hometown, that she started doing playbyplay.
In her third game on the air, a matchup between rivals Monte VistaDanville and De La SalleConcord, Scott felt a surge of adrenaline as she called a 70yard touchdown pass. As she drove home that night, she told herself, “That was pretty damn fun. I want to make a career out of this.”
Over the past decadeplus, as Scott called games for NBC Sports Bay Area, Pac12 Networks and other outlets, she often felt at a competitive disadvantage just because she had gotten started later than most of her male counterparts. To make sure no one watching or listening to her could tell she had less experience, Scott developed a rigorous routine she calls “preprep.”
Before calling a game, she jots down enough notes to fill both sides of an 8by11inch manila folder. Sometimes, when that isn’t big enough to accommodate all of her notes, Scott has to add a piece to the bottom.
She’s an industry pioneer, but Scott has plenty of goals left. Calling the Olympics and World Cup are priorities for her. In recent years, Scott has become interested in perhaps joining a team fulltime as its playbyplay voice.
No female playbyplay announcers work full time in the NBA. If Scott aces Monday’s call, she could become the first.
“I know that there have been women who were just as qualified, if not more qualified, than me and the timing just wasn’t right,” Scott said. “I do a lot of this for them. I’m always thinking about the women that came before me who made it possible for me to get this shot.”