Kavitha Davidson (Photo by instagram.com/kad2105/)
Kavitha Davidson did not take on the most athletic pathway in life, leaving the sports scene as a competitor relatively early.
“I was not the most athletic kid growing up, but I was a competitive figure skater when I was much younger and then aerodynamics and puberty hit,” she said in an RG interview.
But she has become incredibly involved in the world of sports in an inspiring and impactful way. Davidson was a highly successful sports reporter at a multitude of national outlets, including The Athletic, but has since shifted her focus to shedding light on and promoting both women’s sports and other demographics pertaining to sports.
Davidson uses her well-respected voice to further that goal. She hosts a show called “Sportly”, which is a weekly narrative podcast.
“We kind of tell undertold and underrepresented stories from a third culture kid or immigrant perspective,” she explained.
She’s the perfect person to do so, too.
“I’m born and raised in New York, but my parents are from India and came to the country in 1981,” she said. “I kind of realized throughout my career as a sportswriter that my perspective as a daughter of immigrants who also loves baseball and whose parents didn’t know anything about baseball was interesting and unique.”
The show has highlighted a multitude of topics that truly do run the spectrum. They range from serious to more light-hearted subjects.
“We’ve done interesting episodes from everything like the first Asian-Americans in the NFL back in the 1920s to the history of the national anthem at sporting events and games and why we sing that, when that became a regular practice,” she said.
It doesn’t stop there, either.
“Then we do fun episodes, things like the topics of Thanksgiving football and John Madden and turkey legs and things like this. It’s more of a passion project for me than a full-time thing, as I’m looking for my next spot as someone who has only really ever worked for national media outlets.”
The day-to-day production of the podcast is much like others across the country, You have to come up with ideas, have a script and outline ready to go and have plenty of contacts to bring in to add a little extra flavor to things.
“Day to day, we go through things like story ideation, script writing, we have two scriptwriters, a researcher, and point checker,” she said. “Every once in a while we like to give our scriptwriters a bit of a break, so we’ll do an interview episode. Or if there’s a topic I really want to discuss, we have a lot of experts we can bring on.”
Furthering Women’s Sports
These productions in what Davidson has referred to as a “passion project” mean a lot to her, and one of the biggest focal points is the furtherance of women’s sports. That is something Davidson has been heavily involved in throughout her career.
She has been very outspoken and not at all shy about showing people the real numbers on women’s sports and showing why they are just as important to cover as anything else.
“Earlier in my career, I wrote for ESPNW and I have always made the business argument for why coverage of women’s sports is necessary,” she said. “Whenever we talk about women’s sports being overlooked, we talk about the entire picture, which includes stats, highlight reels, profiles, all the top down from the media and the coverage that is available.”
Promoting women’s sports, though, takes a strong degree of purposeful and intentional action. It also takes additional studying and really getting to know things in depth, which is something Davidson does and encourages others to follow her in doing so.
More Work to be Done
Fortunately, the coverage and attention to women’s sports has grown. It is still not exactly where it needs to be, but strides have been made. Davidson recalls a time when hardly anyone would listen to her on the subject.
“When I was in college, I did an internship at Nielsen Sports. I would go to advertisers with hard data showing that, even if you didn’t believe that women love sports and are playing sports, women are making purchasing decisions in a demographic that is wholly ignored in sports,” she explained. “This was about 15 or 16 years ago, and they did not want to hear it. Now, everyone is catching up and it is really nice to see.”
She believes that while some are well-intended and truly back their actions with meaning in promoting women’s sports, a lot of what has gone on here comes down to the almighty dollar. Even though it should come down to passion, equality and truly pure understanding.
It’s not a perfect world.
“The reason they are catching up is that they realize they have left money on the table,” she said.
“I wish I could tell you that people have finally seen the light and that they have seen how great these athletes are; because they are, and the product is fantastic.”
Basketball on the women’s side has been particularly intriguing and has delivered a solid product.
“Especially if you are a basketball fan, it is a purer form of basketball than the men’s is right now,” she said. “People are realizing that it is a growth market and that there is so much money to be made. The barrier of entry for investment is lower than it is for the major men’s American sport.”
Regardless, there is hope that the continued support of women’s sports and more devotion to coverage will be had. It will continue to take time, but the efforts of Davidson and others appear to be taking off with a strong upward trajectory.
“There’s a difference between an outlet just covering sports and an outlet having a dedicated beat writer with a budget covering women’s sports. That is something that we need to see more of, and I think that we are starting to.”
Crissy Froyd is a sports reporter of over 10 years who specializes in quarterback analysis at the high school, college and NFL level. She was mentored by Mike Leach and learned the Air Raid offense and quarterback evaluation largely under the legendary head coach. Froyd has appeared in and worked with multiple publications, including USA TODAY SMG, Sports Illustrated, NBC Sports and Saturday Down South. She also covers canine journalism for Showsight Magazine and resides in Wisconsin with her three dogs -- two German Shepherds named Faxon and Bo Nix, and one Siberian Husky named Stetson "Balto" Bennett.
