Latest / Best of: Features / Kate Scott comes back to the Bay Area for historic WNBA Finals broadcast

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Kate Scott comes back to the Bay Area for historic WNBA Finals broadcast · Best of: Features

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  Kate Scott comes back to the Bay Area for historic WNBA Finals
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  broadcast. This article is being read by an automated
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  voice generated by Everlett. When Kate Scott was a student at UC
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  Berkeley in the early two thousands, she was looking for any way
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  to break into a sports broadcasting career. On Monday, two o decades
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  after she started her trailblazing career in the Bay Area, she's back
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  in San Francisco to call a WNBA finals game between the Golden
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  State Valkyries and Atlanta Dream. In her first year as USA Sports
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  top play by play broadcaster, her first ever WNBA Finals game is
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  back in the city that launched her career. None of this feels
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  real at all, Scott told S F Gate in a phone conversation
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  on Saturday. I often fall back on a quote from another Bay
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  Area trailblazer Belva Davis, who I was lucky enough to meet at
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  a luncheon years ago, when she was asked the same question, and
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  it's the title of her book, which I have read cover to
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  cover many times. This is never in my wildest dreams. Scott forty
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  three grew up in Central Valley in a sports obsessed family and
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  went to Clovis High School, where she caught the storytelling itch at
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  her high school newspaper. As she arrived in Berkeley, she got on
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  camera dwelling doing Cal football highlights and fell into broadcasting through calling
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  high school football games. Now, twenty one years later, Scott will be
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  the play by play broadcaster for Game two on Monday night and
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  Game three on Wednesday night in Atlanta. She'll also call games five,
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  six, and seven should the series between the Valkyries and the Dream
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  go the distance. By doing so, Scott will be a part of
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  more history in the sports broadcasting world. This year's WNBA Finals is
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  The first time in the league's thirty year victory. Where every television
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  broadcaster in a multi-game series is a woman. USA's coverage will feature
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  Sarah Kustock and Hall of Famer Tamika Katchings as analysts. Kustock is
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  also the analyst for the other two games on NBC, with former
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  women's basketball player Zora Stevenson handling play-by-play duties. The Valkyries are up
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  1 0 in the series after Saturday's Come From Behind victory. If
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  the Dream win a single game and send this series past the
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  minimum four games, Scott will be the first woman to be the
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  play-by-play mic for a WNBA championship, since Hannah Storm called the one
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  game inaugural title game in 1997. How would Scott approach calling the
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  final moment for either the Dream or the Valkyries winning their first
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  ever title? Your first thought as a broadcaster, or at least my
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  first thought, is Don't F it up, Scott said with a laugh,
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  because that is so special, and at the game time, what an
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  incredible honor, what a phenomenal opportunity to get to be the voice
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  of a moment that is going to live on forever in this
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  sport. Scott has been the first woman at many stops of her
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  career, starting with being the first female Mick man at Cal. Some
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  standouts, among the others. She was the first woman to do play
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  by play for an NFL game on the radio, announcing two Forty
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  Niners preseason games in twenty sixteen, the first woman to call football
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  games for the Pac Twelve Network. The first woman to call a
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  Golden State Warriors game as part of a special All Woman broadcast
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  in twenty twenty one. And the first woman to call an NFL
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  regular season game for national radio broadcaster, Westwood won, when she did
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  a game in Dublin last year. Bay Area Sports fans may remember
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  Scott Best for a five year run on KNBR AM slash FM
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  when she joined the Murph and Mac morning show, right during the
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  heart of the Giants 2010 S Dynasty. She also did a year
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  as a morning show host at Rival Station 95.7 The Game, joining
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  the every growing list of Bay, Area Sports radio folks to work
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  for both stations. Scott said she's thought of those Giants teams as
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  she's watched both WNBA Finals teams. One of the reasons why the
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  Giants success in the last decade was so much fun was because
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  so many saw ourselves In the undersized, pot smoking Tim Lincicum. It
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  was the same with the Warriors when they were at Oracle, Scott
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  said.
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  There's just a communal joy that comes with that closeness. And the
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  Valkyries have that in the bay. They are such a great representative
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  of every aspect of the bay, whether it's Natalie Nikasi and her
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  Asian American heritage, or it's Gabby Williams shouting out For the game
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  on Pride night. And it's the same in Atlanta when I'm there.
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  Scott is starting her sixth season as the play-by-play announcer for the
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  NBA's Sixers this month, preparing for a season covering newly acquired stars
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  LeBron James and Jalen Brown. In the next two weeks, Scott will
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  be jetting between SF, Atlanta, and Philadelphia to do her play-by-play duties.
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  I'm very much expecting to have a wild next week and a
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  half, Scott said. Fortunately for her the NBA's national TV interest in
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  the new look Sixers means Scott would only miss one Philly game
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  if the WNBA Finals went to Game 7. She said the Sixers
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  already have a backup in place if it comes to that. That
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  game would have Scott back in San Francisco for a winner take
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  all game on Halloween night. Scott, who met her wife, Nicole, in
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  San Francisco, quipped she will hop on Mooney and go straight to
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  the Castro and have a blast after a possible seventh game. But
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  no matter what happens in the series, Scott is just thrilled to
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  have another moment of kismet in her already trailblazing career. Her first
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  national television call of a championship was the NWSL Title Match, which
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  was also host stud here in the Bay Area. But there's something
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  extra for her about calling women's basketball, the sport Scott feels helped
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  vault her career. Scott was a top play by play broadcaster at
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  the Pac twelve network in the two thousand and ten S, on
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  the all when Sabrina Ionescu was a star at Oregon. Stanford was
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  building the core of its twenty twenty one national title winning team,
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  and the Pac twelve was the best women's basketball conference in the
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  country. I'm not here calling LeBron James's final couple of seasons in
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  the NBA without covering women's basketball in the Bay area, Scott said.
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  I don't even know if I can find the words to explain
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  just how special it is to be headed to the Bay for
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  my first call in these finals. She might not have the words
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  for that moment, but she does have gratitude for the other women
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  in the business who have helped her along the way. People like
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  Mindy Bach, Tracy Watkowski, Jen Violet Kennedy, Devon Fox, Mary Murphy, and
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  Krista Blunk helped Scott open doors to new career pathways and set
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  her on the path to this point today. People look at me
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  and think I did this all on my own. I've had many
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  male champions, but so many women helped me and played their woman
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  card, and said my name in the room when I was early
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  in my career, and still just trying to break in. Scott said
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  as she began to tear up. I hope they'll be watching me
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  and know that I think of them all the time.