She is now one of the most recognizable female faces in sports broadcasting. Hannah Lynn Storen was engulfed in sports since childhood and couldn't imagine any other career for herself. But, despite with being constantly faced with discrimination and doors being slammed in her face, she never gave up; she never quit. Eventually, she became Hannah Storm and shattered the gender ceiling at CNN where she became the very first woman sportscaster ever at that network as well as being the first woman to ever cover Major League Baseball at NBC and, now, of course, is the acclaimed host of her own show at ESPN.
The road was long and hard for her but it was her dream and it wasn't something she would easily abandon. As a young girl, she and her brothers traveled a great deal as her father, a major executive in the sports broadcasting industry, transferred around where the jobs took him. Hannah recalls having attended 7 schools in a dozen years. Despite the upheaval, her constant was always sports. She and her brothers would haunt the gyms and catch the basketball games whenever they could. Because of her extensive travels, and having to adjust to new environments so often, she became quite comfortable and adept at meeting and being comfortable with her changing surroundings and people.
Hannah recalls that,
"It's no surprise that I ended up in sportscasting. I lived this world, with my father, Mike Storen. Dad was a sports executive for most of my childhood. Just after I was born, we were living in Oak Park, Ill., and he was still in the Marine Corps. He had just finished helping launch the now-famous Toys for Tots program. As you might expect, he's very creative and a real go-getter. At that point, my childhood became a journey of cities, pro leagues and franchises. We followed Dad from Chicago to various cities and basketball teams like the Baltimore Bullets, Cincinnati Royals, Indiana Pacers, Kentucky Colonels, Memphis Sounds, Atlanta Hawks and baseball's Houston Astros. When I was in sixth grade, Dad was featured in a big Sports Illustrated spread as pro sports' hottest young executive."
As a young girl, she also enjoyed acting and drama and that, too, seemed a preparation for what was to come for her later down the road. She went on to study communications and political science at Notre Dame and that was where her dreams began to really take shape. She would support herself waitressing but always made sure she was working some sports related internship. During her days at Notre Dame, she worked the football broadcasts as the stage manager as well as having internships at TBS, hosted a sports show on the college radio station, and ended up working for the local NBC station when she was a senior.
This was the 1980's and women just didn't go into sports broadcasting or reporting. It was really, for the most part, unheard of. Despite this, Hannah wanted a career in broadcasting. She wanted to be in front of the camera. The challenge, however, was that no woman had ever really done that before so she had to make it up as she went along. She had to blaze the original trail.
Hannah further recalls that,
"My father's peripatetic career also gave me critical perspective when it came to my own career choices. His overall sense of optimism is responsible for my not being afraid to enter a nontraditional career for women: sportscasting. There were virtually no female sportscasters on the air when I graduated from college in the early '80s. I wanted to be on television, and having been around sports my whole life, I knew how much fun it was. (Certainly better than covering local crimes and city council meetings.) Unfortunately, very few people thought much of my chances."
So, she started pounding the proverbial pavement in search of a sportscasters, or sports reporters job. It was hardly your typical job search where she received hardly the standard rejections. She was told everything from women broadcasting sports was ridiculous to they wouldn't have her around the men because the male reporters wouldn't stand for it to one station manager telling her that they would have a female sportscaster there over his dead body.
Dejected, she turned to her dad who suggested she try radio. So, she began applying for at every radio station she could find. This was the days before the world wide web so she haunted the newspapers and the trade journals. Finally, a heavy metal station in Corpus Christi, Texas took her on. The only thing was that they wanted her to become Anna Storm. She met them half way. Eventually, she landed a sports gig in Houston.
"Turns out, Dad was right about that radio job. I was on the air -- and I loved it -- and the experience paid off. From there, I answered another want ad for a job in Houston as a weekend DJ and weekday sportscaster. I drove to Houston and parked myself in the reception area and waited for the program director to leave for lunch. When he did, I popped up, introduced myself and handed him my tape and résumé. I heard from him a week later and eventually was hired for the job."
She really hoped the Houston job would help her to get where she really wanted to be as she recalls that,
"During that very first gig in Corpus Christi, I distinctly remember doing a promotional event in a dive bar and thinking about where I wanted to go with my career. I wanted to host an Olympic telecast one day and then a morning network TV program. Again, I wasn't sure exactly how to get there, but I had a clear vision and the self-confidence to think that I could achieve my dream."
The job in Houston liked her voice and the fact that she was from Notre Dame. She ended up loving Houston. The job seemed pretty great to her, she was making friends and soon had a boyfriend. Her big break, however, came when she was offered a job at a new NBC affiliate station in Charlotte, North Carolina. The station was brand new to the market so they decided they needed some kind of new approach that no one else was doing. They decided that they would have a woman do the sports broadcasts. Hannah was excited but knew she had landed in the middle of NASCAR country. She admitted she knew nothing about auto racing.
She relentlessly sent her tapes around until one was noticed at CNN. In 1989, she became the first female sports broadcaster at CNN and went on to anchor the Goodwill Games at TNT and anchored CNN's leading sports show,
CNN Sports Tonight. As soon as she started at CNN, the hate mail began to flood in. Her boss at the time told her to try and find her own voice and not to try and be a guy about it. It worked and she moved forward toward her dream of doing the Olympics.
Her bigger dreams came true when she left CNN after four years for NBC where she, finally, accomplished her Olympic broadcast dream in Barcelona. She stayed at NBC for ten years where she hosted three Olympic games, two of them while being pregnant, as well as working NBA games and hosting the World Series. Eventually NBC declined as a sports broadcaster and she moved to ABC for five years to work hard news on
The Early Show. After five years there, the network decided on a new look and she ended up at ESPN where she continues to be the legend that she has become.
In the end though, for Hannah, it always came down to her dad and his living inspiration.
"He has a daughter who soaked it all in, who dreamed of being a female sportscaster when there were none, who went on to host four Olympics and a morning TV news show, who wrote two books and now produces and directs films. My father taught me tenacity and gave me the courage to dream big. That is exactly what I want to leave my children: the inner confidence to believe that you can follow your passion, the willingness to work as hard as you can to get it done and the imagination to see what others do not. So his legacy goes far beyond that of simply a love for sports. It's the love of a father for a daughter. My dad has made me want to be the same kind of parent he is: one who doesn't just talk about following your dream
but lives it in a such way that you inspire and enable your children to do the same."
PHOTO CREDITS: ESPN
