Women Sportscasters Call March Madness For The Love Of The Game

If you’re part of the record audiences watching women’s March Madness, you’ve undoubtedly heard some of the women sports broadcasters who are calling the play-by-plays or offering analysis of the games. ESPN has enlisted some of the best-known women in the business for this year’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament, and, for these women, there’s no bigger or better platform.

“Calling women’s basketball isn’t a steppingstone to get to men’s,” former NCAA and WNBA coach Carolyn Peck explained to Forbes over the phone. “It’s a big damn deal.” Peck, who won a national title as head coach at Purdue in 1999, will be inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in April.

Veteran NCAA women’s basketball sportscaster Brenda VanLengen agreed when Forbes spoke with her over zoom. “I’ve been asked, ‘Do you want to do broadcasting for men’s basketball?’ and I’m not really interested in that,” she said. “I’m interested in advocating for and promoting women in sports. That’s my passion and my life.”

When Forbes spoke to Tamika Catchings by phone, she said that doesn’t want to call men’s games either. She’d rather focus her attention on promoting the women’s game. She explained, “I don’t want to do men’s games. I love doing the women’s college basketball games. I love to give these [women athletes] the pedestal they deserve.”

The former WNBA star, NCAA all-American, and Olympian had sworn there were two things she wouldn’t do after her playing career: coach or commentate. In fact, she gave a hard pass the first couple of times a producer approached her to serve as a women’s basketball analyst.

Finally, the producer told her that she couldn’t really say she didn’t like commentating if she hadn’t tried it and convinced Catchings to commit to just three games to see how she liked it. “I had a blast,” she recalled. Before the third game was over, she was hooked and on her way to a new career in sports broadcasting. “I love staying close to the players,” she said. “I love the game.”

Longtime sportscaster Ann Schatz does call NCAA men’s basketball games once or twice a year, but she’s quick to add, “No way do I think to myself if I don’t do men’s games I haven’t made it. No way would I ever think that.”

Forbes spoke to her by zoom. She explained her enthusiasm to “watch women’s teams get more and more spotlight and more and more live coverage of their games and get more and more respect and understand that the ratings are so healthy and understand that these coaches and these players play the highest level of basketball.”

Schatz started her broadcast career in 1989 as the weekend sports reporter for the local CBS affiliate in Omaha back when very few women were sports broadcasters. She said the station figured weekends were not too risky because weekend ratings didn’t matter. If she wasn’t any good, the station could get rid of her, and, if she was good, they’d look pretty progressive as the first station in the region to hire a woman sports broadcaster.

She then became the first woman sports broadcaster for KOIN TV in Portland, Ore., then a sideline reporter for the Trailblazers, and then an analyst for Portland’s short-lived WNBA team. Soon she became an analyst and then a play-by-play announcer for NCAA sports. “I love calling games,” she said.

VanLengen has been calling first and second round NCAA women’s tournament games since 1999. She said, “I’ve had the fortune of having some amazing games over the years, remarkable comebacks, upsets, individual performances, team performances. It’s so cool to be a part of it. To be able to elevate women during March Madness and tell their stories and describe their actions and their skills and their performances, it’s just a huge honor of mine.”

Catchings agreed about calling women’s March Madness games: “It’s a big deal.”

Despite her long tenure in the profession, Schatz is still new to calling tournament games. Her first game was in 2022. “It’s really special,” she said. “That’s the pinnacle. I get the chills even thinking of it.” She added, “I get nervous. It’s a very big deal.”

“To get an opportunity to call an NCAA tournament game—the first was at the age of 64—it’s a great lesson,” she continued. “You keep grinding, you keep working hard, you keep getting better, you keep dreaming, you keep aspiring, you keep the curiosity open, and boom, I got very luck. If I never get to call another one, I got these two, and that makes me very happy.”

Catchings noted the growing excitement nationally for women’s basketball. “March Madness the last couple of years,” she explained, “has been phenomenal. People gravitate to that. There’s a lot of momentum right now. These women—they’re good! We have really good games. When people watch, they get excited.”

Peck, who first joined ESPN in 2001, reminded, “I’ve been saying this for years. Women’s basketball is an untapped revenue stream, and it’s been a hidden secret because it hasn’t gotten the publicity that it’s deserved.” Now, she added, “Advertisers and broadcast organizations are seeing, ‘Oh, damn, I could have been making money off of women’s basketball because people are interested if they could know about it.’”

She continued, “There are some great athletes whose stories need to be told and whose talent needs to be seen.”

VanLengen pointed out the growth in televising women’s basketball. She noted, “We’ve made a lot of progress. To have those [tournament] games, all of them, fully televised is great.” She explained that ESPN has shown a commitment to growing the women’s tournament. “I’ve seen amazing growth in my 28 years of broadcasting these games from those first and second games not even broadcast to the whip-around coverage to what we have now with all of the games being televised. It’s such growth,” she said. “The fans watching and showing those record numbers will continue to push ESPN to continue to grow the game like they’ve done.”

Fans have set records for attending and watching the first and second rounds and the Sweet 16. The Final Four starts Friday. Peck observed, “There are so many great stories [this year]. Caitlin Clark’s gotten Iowa there for the first time [since 1993]. South Carolina is undefeated. Virginia Tech is there for the first time. Kim Mulkey’s taking a different program to the Final Four. What else can you want? This is going to be a great Final Four.”