Engagement Insider
Dana O’Neil was in 3rd grade when she kept score for her father’s slow-pitch softball team.
“They needed someone to keep the book, so I volunteered,’’ O’Neil said. “By the end of the season, I was keeping their batting averages and ERAs.’’
O’Neil, now one of the nation’s top college basketball writers for espn.com, isn’t sure if that’s when she knew she was destined for a career in sports, it was certainly a start.
An All-State field hockey player at South Hunterdon High School, just outside of Lambertville, N.J., O’Neil traded in her stick for a pen and a notebook when she went to Penn State University.
“I don’t know if I could have played in college, or not, but I just decided I didn’t want to deal with all that anymore,’’ she said.
“I was always good in English, and I liked sports, so I joined the school newspaper as a sportswriter.’’
O’Neil admits rather sheepishly that her main motive was to maybe get a chance to cover football and meet the legendary Joe Paterno.
That happened by her junior year and from there she never looked back.
She worked at four different newspapers from Trenton, N.J. to Jacksonville, Fla. to Philadelphia, mostly covering college sports, with some NFL and MLB coverage mixed in as well, before joining ESPN.
“When I started there was Leslie Visser and from a print standpoint Lisa Olsen (of the Boston Globe). They were the pioneers for women,’’ O’Neil said.
While the sports world has changed since O’Neil began and women sportswriters are no longer given strange looks, she admits there were some trying times.
“I remember one time at a Villanova basketball game,’’ she said. “The game ended and we were heading to the locker room when the SID saw me and said: ‘Oh, you’re here’ and stopped me. I told him he had 10 seconds to either let me in the locker room or close it to everyone. I got in.
“Of course you had the jerks out there who would tell you that because you didn’t play football, you couldn’t write about it. And I still get some people telling me I belong in the kitchen. You just have to take all of that in stride and just do your job.’’
O’Neil says the most important thing for a women trying to break into what once was a strict men’s fraternity, is to be prepared.
“You can’t be uniformed or unprepared,’’ she said. “If you’re clueless, you’ll get slammed. What I tell young women who want to get into the business is to do your homework. Study up on the subject you’re covering and also to have a base knowledge of every sport. And then don’t draw extra attention to yourself. Just be yourself and do your job.’’
O’Neil remembers when she began writing being one or maybe one of two women in the press box during a game. Now, while still not even, the balance is certainly greater. At times, she thinks there is even an advantage.
“I think the athletes, for the most part, are fine with a woman sportswriter,’’ she said. “I think some times they actually answer questions differently for a woman than they do for a man. But I really hope, and I think, that in the end they don’t look at me as a woman sportswriter, but just a sportswriter.’’