'Hopefully one day I get to meet that little Black girl who might look like me and sees me on TV and says to her parents ‘I want to do what she does,”’ said meghanmcpeak, who calls games for the Washington Mystics and the Capital City Gogo.
When Meghan McPeak considers where she is in her broadcasting career, against the backdrop of racial unrest and the bleak employment numbers of Black people in her business, she says she feels like Tom Hanks’ character in the movie “Castaway.”The 33-year-old from Hamilton calls games for both the WNBA’s Washington Mystics and the Capital City Gogo, the G League affiliate of the Washington Wizards.
McPeak is one of less than a dozen play-by-play announcers of colour in North America’s biggest pro basketball leagues, including fellow Canadians and brothers Mark and Paul Jones. Mark works for ABC and ESPN, while Paul calls Toronto Raptors games part-time and is an analyst for Sportsnet 590 The Fan.
McPeak chose broadcasting over interior design while at Toronto’s Humber College. Her athletic director Doug Fox nudged her in that direction, good-naturedly pointing out she never stopped talking. As a former point guard, doing play-by-play fits, as she likes to control the direction of the broadcast.
“They didn’t look like me,” McPeak said. “I knew Robin Roberts existed, but didn’t see her a lot we never really we never got ‘SportsCenter’ in Canada on ESPN. But I knew she existed. “They always say that the pioneers get the hardships, the settlers get the land,” Jones said. “I went through all of school and never even had a Black teacher. Our dad, though, he was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and a Jackie Robinson fan, and his thing was: don’t look at the obstacles, just be better.
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