About Rounding Home

Female Sportscasters

I first developed an interest in female sportscasters when my brother played in the NFL in the late ’90′s. Monday Night Football was the headliner game. Every Monday night Lesley Visser was on the sidelines, beautiful and poised. Every man I talked to knew her and seemed to be a fan. I was impressed. Here was a woman who was part of an exclusive boys club. I called CBS headquarters and got a contact number on her. When I told her I wanted to write a play about a girl who wanted to be a sportscaster, she was interested. She invited me to attend the Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM) convention in Cleveland, Ohio, an organization she helped pioneer (see NYTimes article). She said I could meet plenty more women like her, so I packed my bags and headed to Cleveland.

I met some amazing women in Cleveland…Joanne Gerstner from the Detroit Free Press, Christine Brennan, USA Today, Karen Crouse, now at The New York Times, Jill Painter, a columnist for the LA Daily News, Michelle Kaufman, a columnist for the Miami Herald, Lisa Gayle Grayson, from the Medina County Gazette, Paola Boivin from the Arizona Republic. They were kind, smart and very spunky. Here was my tribe!

One of the speakers at the AWSM conference was Pam Ward, the first woman to do college football play-by-play. ESPN put her in the booth! I asked Pam if I could come and see her work. She agreed, so I bought a round trip ticket to Charlotte, North Carolina on December 25, 2003 and shadowed her over two days, as she prepared for and called the Continental Tire Bowl. It was am amazing experience. The footage I shot and edited is not the greatest quality, but it still conveys the demands and complexities of a sportscaster at work. Pam is truly an inspiration.

Thanks to Pam and all the other female sportscasters and sportswriters who shared your world with me!

Sportcaster Pam Ward, ESPN-Continental Tire Bowl 2003 from Amy Goodwin on Vimeo.

ROUNDING HOME

I wrote the play, ROUNDING HOME in 2000. Getting the play off the ground was a whole new challenge. While Austin has a vibrant theater scene, I was not an active part of it. Casting was a major obstacle. I was an unknown entity. At my first casting call only three people showed up…not enough to cover the seven character roles. I returned to the drawing board and changed strategies. I sent my script to Marco Perella, a local actor and acting coach. To my delight, he was interested in directing the play and playing the role of the father. He is an Equity Actor, so Equity wages applied. Next came fundraising. God bless all my generous friends and family. Production budget:3K.

We had another casting call and this time top notch actors in Austin auditioned. We entered our play in Hyde Park Theater’s Fronterafest Long Fringe, an “unjuried alternative, offbeat, new, and just plain off-the-wall fringe theatre” venue. We had a blast. Two of the four shows sold out. We were “Pick of the Week” in the Austin Chronicle. John Aieilli featured us on KUT’s Eklektikos. The cast was amazing. Marco did an amazing job directing and acting. Here is a clip from the play:

Rounding Home Video Clip from Amy Goodwin on Vimeo.