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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE / Chris Roberts Ann Meyers Drysdale Pitches In, Helps Put Together Special Event I’m proud to say I think the Southern California Sports

PRESIDENT Broadcasters, which has been around since 1958, keeps mak- Chris Roberts ing strides toward keeping up with the times. [email protected] Another example of that is the luncheon we have coming EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR - VICE PRESIDENT up May 10 at Lakeside Golf Club. The title of this luncheon is Rand Elkins “The Women Who Cover Sports.” [email protected] (805) 390-4733 This special event, one of our more significant ones in re-

TREASURER cent years, was the brainchild of board member Patrick O’Neal, Joe Cala Ann Meyers Drysdale and our esteemed executive director/vice president, Rand [email protected] Elkins, has taken the ball and run with it.

BOARD MEMBERS And Rand has gotten a big from Ann Meyers Drysdale, who headed up Ray Rosenbaum [email protected] a special committee to put this all together. Annie, a four-time All-American basket- Pete Arbogast ball player who went on to a successful career as the broadcaster and sports exec- [email protected] utive, will also be among the guest speakers. Lynda Burns [email protected] Others include Shelley Smith, a former sports- Jeff Rose writer who became an Emmy Award-winning televi- Larry Stewart [email protected] sion reporter for ESPN, and Lisa Bowman, a local Patrick O’Neal pioneer for women in broadcasting. You can read [email protected] more about Lisa in Larry Stewart’s Editor’s Corner Tom Hoffarth [email protected] column elsewhere in this newsletter. Isaac Lowenkron Shelley Smith All women who have worked in sports media [email protected] Stephanie Corrales locally – or nationally – are encouraged to attend the luncheon, where they will be [email protected] introduced and asked to say a few words. Kaitlin Miller [email protected] The featured speakers will share their stories of how they became successful parts of a male-dominated industry and the challenges they faced, then and now. NEWSLETTER EDITOR Larry Stewart There will be a Q&A at the end of the program.

MEDIA DESIGN Martin Leon I’d have had the opportunity to work with some of the best women in broad- [email protected] casting. One is Kim Amadon. Doing sports reports and “Athletic Briefs” with Continued on page 2 Page 1 Continued from page 1 her and Mark Wallengren during the 1980s and ‘90s at KOST 103 FM was amazing. The late Tracey Miller and I shared a newsroom desk at KFI while doing morning sports on the legendary “Lohman and Barkley” show. She was a great news person and became a solid and opin- ionated talk show host on KABC Radio. Tracey died at age 51 in 2005 from complications due to brain cancer. Liz Kiley was another talented woman who worked at both KFI and KOST before going into man- agement. She became a very good program director. What a pleasure it was to work with these women. During my 23 years as the radio voice of UCLA football and basketball, I also had the privilege of getting to know Ann Meyers Drysdale well. She was the first woman inducted into the UCLA Athlet- ics Hall of Fame and, in 1993, she was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. At Sonora High in La Habra, Annie lettered in seven sports and earned 13 MVP awards. Her bas- ketball teams had a record of 80-5. In 1974, she became the first high school student to play for the U.S. national team. In the 1976 Olympics at , where women competed in basketball for the first time, Annie was a starter on the silver-medal winning U.S. team coached by , who became Annie's coach at UCLA prior to her senior year. The 1977-78 Bruin team won UCLA's only women's national title. The Bruins beat BYU, 102-57, and Stephen F. Austin, 86-60, in the West Regionals at Long Beach. Against Stephen F. Austin, An- nie accomplished the impossible - the first quadruple double in history, male or female: 20 points, 14 rebounds, 10 assists and 10 steals. In the Final Four (played at ) that same year, UCLA beat Montclair State, 85-77, and then Maryland, 90-74, to win the title. NBC televised the title game, marking the first time a women's college game was on national television.

EDITOR’S CORNER / Larry Stewart Second Place Was a Good Start for Radio Pioneer Lisa Bowman I feel a certain kinship to Lisa Bowman, one of the featured guests at “The Women Who Cover Sports” SCSB luncheon May 10 at Lakeside. For one thing, I played a role, albeit a minor one, in Lisa becoming the first woman to work in sports talk radio at a major L.A. station. For another, we both worked with the late Bud Furillo, a fiery type who professed to love you one day and scream bloody murder at you the next. Lisa became a part of KABC Radio’s “Sportstalk” program in 1983, joining Furillo and Tommy Hawkins. She got the job in a round-about way through a talent contest. The contest, which offered a prize of a one-year contract with KABC, was the brainchild of George Green, then the station’s general manager. Continued on page 3

Page 2 Continued from page 2

Lisa, an accomplished actress, singer and dancer, heard about the contest while listening to KABC, then the Dodgers’ flagship radio station. She decided to give it a shot. The number of entries was whittled down to 10 finalists, who auditioned live in front of a panel of judges. As the TV-Radio sports columnist for the Times, I was one of the judges. To the best of my recollection, other judges included broadcaster Stu Nahan and sportswriters John Hall and Allan Malamud. A brash New Yorker named Merrie Rich was the narrow winner over Lisa, but she lasted barely a month. The story goes that she told Green she couldn’t wait to get back to New York once her contract was up. Green supposedly told her Lisa Bowman something like, “You don’t need to wait, you can go back to New York right now.” Lisa, the runner-up, moved into her spot. A native of Walnut Creek in the Bay Area, Lisa attended Occidental and UCLA to study drama. While still in school, jobs in entertainment started falling her way. It came easy for her. She was a multi- talented natural. But sports broadcasting was something new for her – and women in general back in the 1980s. She became a pioneer. And it wasn’t easy. “There was no training period, no mentoring,” Lisa recalls. “My first day on the job, (producer) Mal Al- berts handed me a list of commercials to read, and that was it.” Lisa had another issue to deal with as well. She had to juggle her schedule since she was also the mother of a 6-month old son, Stephen. Through it all, things worked out. Lisa loved working with Tommy Hawkins and she is too nice of a person to openly criticize Furillo, who died in 2006 at the age of 80. But having worked under Furillo for 3½ years when he was the sports editor of the Herald Examiner, I know she had some rough times. In fairness, Furillo was a brilliant newspaperman who did much to help my career – but you didn’t want to be around him when he was having a bad day. Lisa put in her year at KABC, then returned a few years later to work on the “Dodgertalk” pregame show with Al Downing, appropriately nicknamed Gentleman Al Downing. “You won’t find two nicer gentlemen than Tommy Hawkins and Al Downing,” Lisa says. Lisa later did Ram reports for KMPC and was a regular contributor to Gabe Kaplan’s “Sports Nuts” show on KLAC. In 1989, she served as president of the Southern California Sports Broadcasters. Lisa lives in Sierra Madre with her husband of 38 years, Chuck Bowman, a former KTLA weatherman and news reporter who went on to a successful career as a television director and producer, working on a number of prime-time series. Their son Stephen, now 34, followed his father’s footsteps into television production, as did Rob Bow- man, Chuck’s 56-year-old son from a previous marriage.

Page 3 Next SCSB Luncheon - Wednesday, May 10th at Lakeside Golf Club at 11:30 a.m. The Women Who Cover Sports Special Guest Speakers

Ann Meyers Drysdale Shelley Smith Lisa Bowman Four-time UCLA All- ESPN Reporter Former KABC American and current “Sportstalk” host broadcaster

SCSB Members (with dues with current dues paid) Checks can be mailed to: $40 each or pay at the door $45 each SCSB Non Members 44103 Village 44 $50 each or pay at the door $55 each Camarillo, CA 93012 Join the SCSB now and save!! Remember no denim at Lakeside Contact SCSB - Rand Elkins - [email protected] - (805) 390-4733

Martin Leon 1329 East Bennett Avenue Glendora, CA 91741 PAST PRESIDENTS Tom Harmon 1958-60 Gil Stratton 1961-62 Bill Welsh 1963-64 Fred Hessler 1965-66 Chuck Benedict 1967-68 Allin Slate 1969-70 Stu Nahan 1971-72 Tom Kelly 1973-74 Mike Walden 1975-77 Ed Arnold 1978-79 Joe Buttitta 1980 Steve Bailey 1981-82 Chuck Benedict 1983-84 Steve Roah 1985-86 Steve Bailey 1987-88 Lisa Bowman 1989 Stu Nahan 1990-91 Mike Walden 1992-93 Bill Welsh 1994-96 Stu Nahan 1997-07 Bob Miller 2008-12 Joe Cala 2013-15 Chris Roberts 2016-

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