The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
How former Husky Culmo became the voice of UConn
Meghan Culmo’s first impression of playing for UConn takes place inside the Greer Field House.
It was 1988 and the women’s basketball team shared an auxiliary locker room with women’s soccer in the fall and baseball in the spring. The arena — which had a capacity of 4,600 — was never full. Culmo remembers UConn associate head coach Chris Dailey offering extra credit to students in her jogging class if they came to games.
“I still remember when nobody cared and nobody came,” Culmo said.
But it was that spring of Culmo’s freshman season in March 1989, inside the Field House, when everything began to change. When all the pieces finally came together and UConn won its first Big East regular-season and tournament titles. When the program made its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
In the 33 years since, UConn has won an additional 26 Big East and American Athletic Conference regularseason titles, 25 conference tournament titles, made 31 more NCAA Tournament appearances and won 11 national championships — all of which Culmo has been a part of on the sideline.
After helping build the backbone of the team’s historic legacy during her playing career, Culmo has gone on to create a legacy for herself on the opposite side of the court as an analyst for the team on both TV and radio — including her run as SNY’s analyst and color commentator since 2012.
Through all the big wins and the few heartbreaking losses, all the first-round WNBA draft picks and AllAmericans, Culmo remains deeply involved with the program not only because of the relationships she’s made, but because of her appreciation for the team and where it all began.
“I just have such an appreciation of how it started and how there was no one around,” Culmo said. “Like this was never, honestly ... this was never the goal. I’m proud to be affiliated with it, but I’m happier for their success and the way (Geno Auriemma has) been able to do it. Because we’re witnessing something pretty special that I’ll never see again in my lifetime and the fact that I have a small part of it and helped kind of build it from the ground, like literally the ground, that will always be special to me.”
UConn women’s basket
ball didn’t move into Gampel Pavilion until halfway through Culmo’s sophomore year. The team had its own locker room and shared two computers inside a team lounge.
Culmo, then Meghan Pattyson, became a two-time All-Big East third-team selection and was named the 1991 Most Outstanding Player of the Big East Tournament. She totaled 1,106 career points, 674 rebounds, 299 assists in 118 career games as a Husky, helping the team reach the Final Four for the first time her junior season.
But more than any tournament win or accolade, it was the relationships she made on the team that persuaded her to come back as an assistant coach after graduating. After two years, she realized coaching wasn’t for her and soon fell into radio.
She loved bringing color into the game, breaking down a play and explaining step-by-step to the fans listening at home, in the car and, eventually, on TV.
“Radio is such a great place because from once the ball goes through the hoop I have from that point to explain what happened to someone,” said Culmo, who graduted from UConn with a BA in Mass Communications. “I always think of someone driving in a car. If someone is driving in a car, how do you explain from when the ball goes through the hoop until the other team gets the ball across half court ... like I have that amount of time to get in and get out.”
She knew how much it meant to the players and their families to hear their kid’s name broadcast live and wanted to bring that feeling to as many listeners as possible.
“I love what I do,” she said. “I love being able to just try to provide a little color to what people are seeing, but I’m also very mindful of people are tuning in to watch these players. They’re not tuning in to hear me drone on. I’m very mindful of that, that all I’m trying to do is explain maybe how or why something just happened but not trying to make it about me. It’s about these players and the coaches.”
She remembers being “psyched” when SNY brought her on in 2012 to become the voice of UConn women’s basketball. After 20 years of dominating the college women’s basketball world, here was this New York sports TV station investing in the sport unlike ever before.
Yes, UConn had become the most successful women’s basketball team in the nation but the sport itself was still facing inequity compared to most men’s college programs. So the fact that a New York station was making it a priority was almost unheard of.
Culmo remembers receiving a thin white zip-up jacket her junior year at UConn as a Big East Tournament player gift. The jacket was so thin that every time she tried to zip it up, the fabric would rip. That same year, the men’s team received boom boxes as their player gift from the conference.
A lot has changed. Women’s basketball has risen immensely in popularity across the nation, especially with the launch of the WNBA in 1996.
The 2021 NCAA championship game between Stanford and Arizona averaged 4.1 million viewers, becoming the sport’s most-watched national title game since 2014.
And while UConn was unable to fill the lower bowl of Gampel during Culmo’s playing career, the team drew over 8,400 for an exhibition game against Division II Fort Hays State on Nov. 7.
When asked about the proposed idea of a combined women’s and men’s Final Four, Culmo had reservations not just because the idea would cause a logistical nightmare, but because it automatically places the two sports on a stage for comparison.
“I’ve never been one to say for women’s basketball that we have to always do it exactly like the men,” she said. “Our games are very different. Our fan base is generally different. There’s a lot of crossover, but I don’t think we always have to compare ourselves because it’s kind of comparing apples to oranges.”
For Culmo, staying involved with UConn and with women’s college basketball was not because of championships or the program’s long list of All-American players. She’s stayed involved because of the family-like relationships she’s made with her SNY crew, with Auriemma and Dailey, with her former teammates and even with the former Huskies she didn’t play with.
“It really is just about the people and the relationships,” said Culmo, who’s on multiple texting threads with Huskies past and present, including Stefanie Dolson, Caroline Doty, Mel Thomas and Stacey Wetzel. “Every senior class over the last several years, whether it’s Kyla Irwin or even Morgan Tuck or Stewie (Breanna Stewart), anybody, it’s ‘You’re one of us now,’ and that’s what I tell them. ‘You’re one of us.’ Anyone needs anything, anyone wants anything, we’re all there for each other.”
Culmo doesn’t know when she’ll set down the microphone and headphones and become a causal fan. She can’t imagine not being involved with the program at some level, for not only has it given her so many once-in-alifetime experiences and introduced her to so many people, it’s become a part of her and made her into the person she is today.
“I almost feel like I can’t believe that I’m still doing these games,” she said. “I can’t believe that it’s been almost 30 years, 20-someodd years. When SNY got the package, I was so psyched to get on board. And thank God it’s going well, and as long as the team is fun to watch and as long as it works for SNY, I’m just thankful to be a part of it. I don’t know how long this will continue. I’m happy to be along for the ride as long as I can.”