To be truly captivating, a personal memoir needs to have at least these three things: an interesting baseline story, meaningful insight, and a strong voice conveyed well in quality writing. In all those ways, Andrea Kirby’s new memoir, The Athlete Whisperer: An Improbable Voice in Sports (FriesenPress 2025), excels.
The baseline story tells readers how a small-town girl from Alabama and a divorced mother of two children became a groundbreaking sports broadcaster and media personality in the seventies when sports coverage was a man’s domain. This is the story of a woman who became ABC Sports’ first full time female announcer and who was soon traveling the globe for “Wide World of Sports.” Later, Kirby recognized an unfulfilled need among athletes forced to deal with reporters and broadcasters and became a media coach who guided sports players into dealing confidently with media encounters.
That Kirby was a groundbreaking female in sports and media is without doubt a fascinating base story in this memoir—but the personal stories are also compelling. Kirby was born in an area of Alabama she describes as “tucked in the northwest corner of the state near Mississippi and Tennessee, … covered with pine trees as if hiding.” She reveals a charmed early childhood—though this would change with divorce and death—in which “every child ran free if she were so inclined.” After her parents split, and then her father died, she and her siblings went to live in Memphis, where she struggled with being an outsider. Subsequently, she attended The University of Alabama, majoring in Broadcast and TV journalism. After graduation, she took a job in broadcasting in Atlanta, met her future husband, married, and then “it was time to give up my first broadcast career for the special one of being a mom.”
She tells the next part of her story with disarming honesty:
An article in the local paper caught my eye. A start-up cable television station was going on the air in nearby Sarasota, Florida! I called and asked about the weather position, but…it was filled. I turned on a dime.
“That’s fine,” I said. “What I’d rather do is sports.”
This was 1971, sports broadcasting was an all-male club, and Sarasota had a small-city, conservative identity. Still, using her talents, wits, and a bit of subterfuge, Kirby landed the position in Sarasota, but she would soon expand into national and network broadcasting.
Andrea Kirby
She traveled from that small TV station in Sarasota, to Baltimore, California, and New York. At a time when she was subject to men who would stare right at her and tell her that as a female she had no business in sports broadcasting, she withstood uncooperative co-anchors and cameramen and outright sabotage. Kirby is no complainer, though, and her memoir stresses all the people in sports who helped her, mentored her, and cooperated with her. The tone of the memoir is respectful, sensitive, and uplifting.
In telling her story, Kirby shows great insight into day-to-day broadcast TV, the history and values of the time frames, the personalities, the culture and ethos of professional sports, and her own life. The memoir is full of respectful stories of interviewing big-name coaches like the legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant, covering games on TV in live action with “no mulligans,” her own love of sports, and personal glimpses into her own life and a few of the people who figure large in her story. She admits, “My personal life did not come as easily to me as my career did.”
In part from her insight (and empathy) and in part as a career move, Kirby realized that professional athletes, especially the younger ones, often had difficult times with media interviews and coverage. She was among a group of reporters interviewing a future NBA star:
He looked trapped and uncomfortable. His eyes darted above reporters’ heads as he squeaked out one or two-word answers. They repeated or rephrased questions to help [him] overcome his discomfort but nothing helped. I thought he might pass out.”
Kirby understood that the intense media attention was out of his comfort zone, and that he was not alone in this. Perhaps this level of discomfort led to poor interviews which in turn fed the “dumb jocks” stereotypes, she thought, as a light bulb turned on:
“Athletes would benefit from being confident, thoughtful, and collaborative with the media—a win-win for players and reporters. I could coach athletes to be great with the media.”
Her first media workshop took shape within months of that epiphany and in 1984 Kirby launched not only a new career for herself but a new field in sports. She had wondered why no one else provided such a service, but as soon as she proved successful as a media coach, others did start similar businesses.
Kirby’s memoir includes references to names even non-sports fans will know. She turned down Mike Tyson, fresh from serving a prison sentence, as a client of her media coaching business; she was a colleague of a young, then unknown Oprah Winfrey in Baltimore; she worked alongside of and befriended a woman who would make a dark history when she committed suicide on air. Along the way, Kirby—who confesses to loving a challenge—had plenty of fun and adventure. She learned to surf while shown live on air in Hawaii as part of a promo for an event she was covering, and she rode a thoroughbred while covering horse racing.
Rounding out the three ingredients of an excellent memoir, Kirby’s fascinating base story, told with insight, is also well written with a distinct and authentic voice. It should be no surprise that Kirby writes so well. As a broadcast journalist, her job was not just about being on camera as she also wrote and edited copy and scripts. Those talents for getting quickly to the heart of the story and not wasting words are evident in her memoir. Written in clear, crisp sentences, The Athlete Whisperer is an intelligent and important memoir by someone with a brave story to share. It’s an enlightening, compelling pleasure to read The Athlete Whisperer.
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