Kate Scott is Calling the Shots

California Dreaming

Scott grew up in Clovis, just outside of Fresno. Aside from Kate, no one in the Scott household would rank as a particularly avid sports fan. Scott, however, sped past avid and went to rabid. She played tennis, soccer, and basketball, and ran track. Her parents neither pushed nor discouraged her; they simply asked what gear she needed.

It was a subtle thing, a parenting move made more out of simplicity than intention. Yet it planted in Scott a seed that grew into a lifelong motto: Why not? It never occurred to her parents that Scott couldn’t or shouldn’t try sports, just like, years later, it never dawned on Scott that she shouldn’t be able to pursue a sports broadcasting career.

She just did it.

Her playing career framed her approach to her professional one. Scott used to play up in travel soccer, her 14-and-under team going head to head with 17-and-unders. Her coach did it purposefully, knowing that it would force them to work collectively as a team but also recognizing that when their turn came, when they were the under-17 team, it would be that much easier. It honed traits she already had—perseverance and determination—while also developing her resilience.

Some might call it pluck, but that seems a little too quaint for Scott. She is grit and tenacity, more a “Oh yeah, watch me,” than a “gosh darn.” She does not, that is to say, hear the words “can’t” or “won’t” and think like the little engine. She’s more of a locomotive, steamrolling ahead. “My innate response to a challenge has always been, bring it the f– on,’’ she says with a laugh. “That should probably be the title of my book one day.’’

Her own athletic dreams died hard and young, courtesy of a knee injury. Instead, Scott went to the University of California, Berkeley, and got her sports fix by writing columns for a Cal-centric magazine and website. She also became the Bears’ first female “mic” man (leading cheers at football and basketball games), approaching the job much the same way her parents considered her sports pursuits. Well, why not me? she asked. A gig running a student segment on a local television affiliate led to her first real job.

After Scott graduated in 2005, a producer of the show called and asked if she wanted to call some area high school football games. It was love at first play call. Soon Scott was doing a little bit of everything, including TV reporting for Cal football and hosting the Bears’ postgame radio show. She followed the same pattern after landing a full-time job with KNBR, the radio affiliate for the San Francisco 49ers, Giants, and Golden State Warriors. Along with doing sports updates and filling in for host spots as needed, she found work as a sideline reporter for the professional soccer team in town, reported for the minor league baseball team, and did some anchoring work when the NBC affiliate needed a pinch hitter.

It became an unintentional mantra, a need to never say no, that she still has not quite shaken. “I have just had to be more in every way,’’ Scott says. “More willing to say yes to every assignment and more resilient when co-workers doubted me or purposefully tried to make things difficult for me. More empathetic and more willing to understand that people are going to have reactions to my existence and my presence, and it really didn’t have anything to do with me. I feel like I’ve had to prove myself every single day, again and again and again.’’

It can be exhausting—and still is, on occasion, Scott admits. She has encountered her share of Neanderthals and trolls, some implying she only has been given jobs because of her gender, others opting to simply discredit her because of it. To say it doesn’t sting would be a lie. What Scott has learned, however, is it doesn’t matter. There are some people she will never win over. Instead, she chose to concentrate on the opinions of the people who matter—her peers, her employers, and the athletes and coaches she’s covered.

With them, she’s found that it’s her work that matters—and that’s something she knows she has covered. “The prep fills me up and motivates me; the game is icing on the cake,’’ she says. “The moment [the audience] sees, that’s the fun part. I love the digging in.’’ It is that, the embracing of the actual job as opposed to worrying what people think about how she does it, that has afforded Scott opportunities that still blow her away.

• In 2016, Scott became the first woman to call an NFL game on the radio, when she worked two preseason games for the San Francisco 49ers.

• During a stint with the Pac 12 Network, she became the network’s first woman to call a college football game.

• In 2020, she was part of the first all-women broadcast crew for a U.S.-broadcast National Hockey League game.

• A year later, she set another first, as the first woman to call men’s Copa America and Gold Cup soccer for Fox Sports.

• In 2021, the 76ers called, making Scott one of only two women to serve as the full-time “voice” for a major men’s professional team.

On the rare opportunity she pauses to wonder how she got here, Scott realizes she still doesn’t have a real answer. “I didn’t see a path,’’ she says, “because this path didn’t exist. None of this existed.’’

Here is the thing about being a pioneer, or at least being viewed as one: everyone views the breakthrough as the apex, when it’s just the starting point. Scott already has traversed a pretty tall ladder, but she’s hardly out of rungs. That old tennis coach indeed knew a thing or two about his athlete. Scott will work the Seattle Seahawks preseason games again this year and riffs about maybe one day landing a national play-by-play gig.  A woman has never called a Super Bowl. Could she? Who’s to say no?

Not that she thinks she’s perfected her current job. Scott is a relentless self-critic, though she tries to be constructive about it. She’ll listen to other announcers that she admires to hear how they called a big shot or controversial play and try to learn. Recently ESPN’s Dave Pasch served as the network’s play-by-play voice for a Sixers game that Scott naturally called, too. She purposefully went back to critical points to see if Pasch said something differently, or better. For the record, he did not.

Scott also solicits feedback from her peers. Kevin Harlan, one of the play-by-play voices for the NBA on TNT and the NFL on CBS’s play-by-play announcers for college basketball and the NFL, told her to regulate how quickly she spoke, which sounds a lot easier than it really is. There is, with excitement, a natural tendency to talk faster; Scott’s job is to inject the excitement without speeding up her words. Legendary hockey announcer Doc Emrick reminded her that she always has more time than she thinks she has, and that there are pictures to go with what she’s saying. She needn’t fill every void with sound.

Three years in with the Sixers she admits—albeit reluctantly—that she’s not only better than when she’s started, she’s actually pretty good. “I know now that I belong here. I proved myself,’’ she says. “Now it’s the intricacies of how do I improve in the guts of the game, in the big moments? And also to take a deep breath and remind myself that I’ve earned this, so go have some fun.’’