and majority male; the players' roster isn't much more diverse."When I get to the ballpark, I do look around, and more often than not, I am the only Black woman in my space covering a team," Watson tells POPSUGAR.At first, she let that disparity get to her."I felt like I had to make myself digestible to a white male," she says.
It didn't help that she was learning the job on the fly, hosting game days for a sport she'd never reported on before. She wasn't surprised when comments about her experience came flooding in on social media when she first started."I've been told I was a diversity hire" and"that I should not be here," Watson says, adding that fans have suggested that the only reason she got the job was because the team has partly Black ownership and a Black manager.
Her family also immersed her in sports from an early age. She played basketball, was on the swim team, and did gymnastics. Her main priority, however, became volleyball: she played all the way through college as a D-1 athlete at Columbia University. When it came time to choose between playing volleyball professionally or exploring other career opportunities, Watson says the choice was easy. She'd long admired the careers of reporters like Claire Smith, Samantha Ponder, and Maria Taylor, and she used their success as a blueprint for her own life. She stayed at Columbia and got her masters in journalism, becoming the first female recipient of the ESPN and NABJ.
"As a woman of color, our margin for error is very small," Watson says. In casting her net far and wide and gaining experience across different sports, she aims to pave a path for other Black kids to walk in the future — and hopes that her example might give them the freedom to explore what they're good at within the industry."That means the world, because I did what I was supposed to do," Watson says.
kirsten_watson chapter 11 in 12 months