CHICAGO (BVM) — ESPN’s Emmy and Peabody award-winning sports reporter, Sarah Spain, has become one of the few women to become an owner or co-owner of a major league team. Spain has partnered up with 31 others in owning the Chicago Red Stars soccer team. 

She also has her national ESPN Radio show, “Spain and Fitz,” and her own podcast “That’s What She Said.” Spain is also an espnW journalist and frequent panelist on ESPN’s “Around the Horn,” “Highly Questionable,” “Outside The Lines” and “SportsCenter.”

Growing up 45 minutes north of the city of Chicago, Spain was originally born in Cleveland. While attending the Lake Forest school system, Spain and her sister were playing sports year-round from junior high throughout college. 

Spain played three sports, and in the summers, she would partake in nationals for field hockey, nationals for basketball (AAU) and Junior Olympics for track. Spain was also all-state in band and choir. Attending Cornell University, Spain received a scholarship for basketball, field hockey, and track and field. 

“I wanted to find the balance of the best sports experience, plus the school,” Spain explained. “Since I was mostly looking at Ivy Leagues, it was a great balance between doing track at the Division 1 level, really pushing myself as an athlete, while still having it be a great education.” 

While attending Cornell, Spain majored in English and had a goal of becoming an actress. She took a bunch of theatrical-themed classes and tried to make it on Second City. During this time, she never had an inch of interest to be in the sports industry. 

Even though she wanted to be an actress and was working on her improv skills, Spain took a sports reporting class in Los Angeles and had her teacher proposing an idea that she creates an image within the sports industry, making a statement that women can be in sports. 

“Maybe I can try to bring this to the sports world and be funny and be a woman in sports, who at the same time, gets to be funny,” Spain said about her thoughts at the time.

After living in LA for six years, Spain decided to move back to her hometown and live in the city of Chicago, allowing her to report on Chicago sports. However, being a woman in sports at the time she first started her sports career in LA was extremely difficult.

“From the beginning, it was tougher because when I started at a start-up company, it was kind of early for websites to be giving access to locker rooms,” Spain explained. “It was mostly ESPN’s website or major outlets, it wasn’t other blogs. I would go in there and get looked at funny, especially because I just moved back and didn’t know anyone else. They all knew each other, they all recognized each other. I am very tall. I would walk in and they would notice that it was one of two women in the entire place.”

Spain continued to explain the hardships she first faced within the workspace. 

“I had some bad experiences early on,” she added. “PR and other reporters would assume I was a moron, I wasn’t qualified, I was trying to sleep with the players or any of the stupid stuff you hear about. I had to be thick-skinned about it, put my head down and work as hard as possible.”

Spain didn’t let the little things get in the way of her hard work. She continued to succeed. 

“There are more women than before,” Spain explained. “When I worked at Fox Sports Net, there were probably 40 people in the main newsroom, and maybe two women.”

After four years, when Spain left the radio station, she noted that there hasn’t been a woman since her on the air. She explained how no women were working in production, no women were producing, and no women were working for the board. While being in a male-dominated industry, that did not stop Spain to prove her worth. 

“When I got hired to espnW, suddenly I was on a team of all women,” Spain said. “Working in ‘W’ is different than all places. Radio is still predominantly men. Most of my co-workers have been men. One of my producers is a woman, the rest are men. Most people who work on the board are men.

“On ‘Around the Horn,’ I usually often have another female panelist. On ‘Highly Questionable,’ I usually have another woman on the show with me. ‘SportsCenter,’ ‘Outside the Lines,’ etc., have a lot more women now. It’s rare for me to work with just all men, except for on the radio. It is getting better.” 

Spain had multiple mentors from ESPN, including: Steve Cochran, Dan LeBatard, Jemele Hill and Rob King. They helped her remember that she just had to be so good that they cannot say no, and to keep working hard. 

Not only has Spain become an exceptional sports journalist, but recently she has become a co-owner of the Chicago Red Stars — a franchise in the National Women’s Soccer League.

“It came to me because of all the work I did,” Spain stated. “I had already established myself as someone in women’s sports, I had already been covering the Red Stars, I had already thrown the party for them, I had already been on the forefront speaking out about women and diversity in sports. So, it wasn’t luck, it was a lot of the work eventually making me someone that was a candidate to own the team.”

Spain continued speaking about how this was the first time she invested in anything this major. 

“I had never invested in anything before,” Spain explained. “It was a big leap and a lot of money, but it was something that I believe in so much and that is a great investment. It has massive growth potential.”

While there have only been positive responses since Spain has bought into the team, she explains the everyday assumptions of being a woman owner. 

“So far it has just been an awesome response,” Spain stated. “There are a lot of the traditional assumptions, ‘So your husband bought it and you…?’ No. I bought it, it’s all my money that I made and he has nothing to do with it. But, he’s very supportive.

“This has happened throughout my entire career, Brad likes sports but he doesn’t work in sports and people will still be like, ‘So did Brad write that?’ And I’m like, ‘Why would Brad do my job for me, he doesn’t even work in sports.’ But, mostly it has been positive responses and a lot of interviews, a lot of people asking how it came about and whether they would be interested or not.”

Spain continues to work hard and put the hardships aside. Even though Spain is an exceptional sports reporter and now co-owner of an NWSL team, she also sets aside time to volunteer at the dog shelter and charity, ‘Peace for Pits,’ giving back and helping the community. 

“My husband and I try to help out with them,” Spain said. “We foster dogs, but not right now because we are at our max, three in the bed, and we don’t have any more room in the bed. But, we foster dogs and my husband does some transporting of dogs to the vet and their foster. We just try to help out whenever we can with them.”

Not only do Spain and her husband volunteer for ‘Peace for Pits,’ but Spain and one of her mentees, who has significant hearing loss, started their charity, ‘Hear the Cheers,’ which helps out kids who cannot hear that play sports. 

“It gets kids hearing aids and equipment so that they can keep playing sports because most of them are not covered by insurance, which is wild,” Spain stated. “This is our ninth year of doing that, which is awesome.”

Spain is also on the board of ‘EMBARC,’ which is a program that takes up a whole class in a school day at Chicago high schools for mostly underserved neighborhoods. 

“It helps them experience cultural and industrial things in the city that they otherwise might not,” Spain stated. “They can learn about jobs they might want to do, get out of the neighborhoods that they’re in and explore the city more. A lot of it is to get kids in really tough neighborhoods to get to see the opera, or go to Whole Foods or learn about working at a different job because a lot of what is around them is just not a great model for getting out of the neighborhood and having success. We want to get them inspired by something and passionate about something so that they want to go to college and keep studying.”

Spain continues to give back to the community and continues to be an exceptional sports reporter, journalist and woman in sports.

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