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Succeeding as a sports broadcaster was a goal that emerged during adolescence for Beth Mowins ’89.
“I grew up with three brothers and a dad who was a high school basketball coach,” she says. “I grew up with sports and always enjoyed playing because it kept me out of trouble. I watched sports on TV and got interested in broadcasting quickly. I knew early in life that’s what I wanted to do.”
Mowins is just the second woman to voice college football play-by-play for ESPN. Last fall, she became ESPNU’s face of the Western Athletic Conference and she is making the calls for the network affiliate again this season.
“It is nice to know ESPN respects the work that I do and appreciates the effort that goes into preparing for a game,” she says. “Hopefully it leads to even more opportunities down the road.”
A standout basketball player at Lafayette, Mowins worked at the College’s radio station and returned during summer breaks to her hometown of Syracuse, N.Y., where she interned with local television stations to gain experience. The English graduate’s efforts paid off in acceptance by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications for graduate studies.
Her first full-time job was with a radio station in Syracuse covering sports and news, but her eyes were on something bigger. She sent out demo tapes and impressed the Big East Conference enough to land a broadcasting job working chiefly with women’s basketball.
“I found my niche on regional and national TV at a time when women’s events were just starting to hit the airwaves,” Mowins says. “I started covering women and worked up. Once people got comfortable with my work, that’s when things on the men’s side started to open up.”
With more than a decade of professional experience that includes work for the ACC and Penn State, Mowins still gets excited to strap on the headset and spend the next few hours providing the call for a captivated audience, a feeling she particularly enjoys when covering college football.
“I love the atmosphere of college football,” she says. “Whenever you’re covering a college event there is a certain electricity on campus that [excites you].”
Although most of her peers are men, Mowins is quick to say that this neither bothers nor intimidates her. She is constantly a student of her craft, learning from some of the industry’s best.
“It’s my goal on the air to be informative, knowledgeable, and entertaining, and I’m always picking up techniques from other announcers,” she said. “There are certain voices that mean something. Keith Jackson is college football. Vin Scully is baseball. I also enjoy ESPN’s Mike Patrick. I don’t want to be compared to them, but I like to think that there’s a place for me in the industry.”
Mowins’ accomplishments are rooted in her experiences on College Hill.
“I remember four years that changed me tremendously,” she recalls. “I went in as a kid knowing what I wanted to do, but unsure of how I could get there. Lafayette was great at helping me find the road I had to take to accomplish my goals. It instilled self-confidence and gave me the tools to figure out what needed to be done.”
A four-year letter winner and two-year captain of the women’s basketball team, Mowins set the single-season (220) and career (715) records for assists, which still stand, and ranks seventh on the all-time scoring list with 1,159 points. She led the Leopards to the 1986-87 East Coast Conference title in a thrilling 60-58 win over Lehigh.
Last November, she became the 14th woman to be inducted into the Maroon Club’s Athletic Hall of Fame
“It was certainly a wonderful honor when I look at some of the tremendous athletes who were around just during my short years at Lafayette,” she says. “It’s a great honor to be mentioned with them. It’s also a nice reward for a lot of hard work.”