PUEBLO, Colo. – Before the final day of competition at The American at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, Kate Harrison took a brief pause.
Pia Toscano was singing God Bless America, and Harrison was in the broadcast booth listening to her sing and looking around at the packed house.
“Here we are,” she thought. “AT&T Stadium, the Mecca of sports, getting ready to produce what is the world’s richest rodeo, and I get to play a small part in that history.”
Harrison, the sideline reporter for the weekly Unleash The Beast broadcasts on CBS Sports Network, was making some significant history of her own. At The American, Harrison became the first woman ever to do play-by-play for a rodeo on television.
“I grew up my whole life rodeoing and never thought there would be a possibility, in AT&T Stadium, to have a rodeo with $3 million on the line, in front of a packed house, and I have the honor of getting to call it,” she said. “That just never even dawned on me that rodeo could be to this point 25 years ago. So now, to be able to be involved in it at this point of growth, it just instantly felt like such an honor. Before it even happened, it was an honor.”
It also happened to be her first experience doing play-by-play.
Before working with the PBR, Harrison worked in both television and radio, doing just about anything you could imagine in the sports world, covering everything from football to water polo, and even hosting the morning show for Radio Disney for a time.
But play-by-play?
“When (The American) hired me for it, I told them, ‘You realize I’ve done probably every other facet of sports reporting you could do but play-by-play?’” Harrison said with a laugh. “From hosting to sidelines, pregame, postgame, halftime, you name it. But it was my first play-by-play.”
While it was a new challenge for her, the timing felt right. Teton Ridge had just taken over The American, and she knew they planned on doing it bigger and better than it had ever been. And knowing that she would be the first woman ever in this role at a rodeo gave her all the motivation she would ever need.
“I knew the work it was going to take, and I wanted to put the work in to do it,” Harrison said. “It was making sure I was able to deliver, and not only for me, not only for The American, but for the moment that it was, and wanting it to be so good that it wasn’t if I was a woman or if I wasn’t. It was just the best it could be for play-by-play for The American in that moment.”
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Harrison was approached about the role by producer Joe Lovero, who she’d worked with at her very first American in 2014. He was the producer then, when she was sideline reporting, and she credits him and analyst Justin McBride with first introducing her to the PBR.
“They brought (Lovero) on to produce this American, and he gave me the call and said, ‘I want you,’” Harrison said. “So it was kind of neat how it all came full-circle, what would it be now, eight years later?
“He was confident in my abilities before he even introduced me to the role, which was really neat because it gave me that confidence. And instantly, I was just excited for the moment, excited for the opportunity.”
Harrison had just six weeks to prepare for her play-by-play debut. She slept an average of two hours a night before The American and, after the 2022 PBR Global Cup USA going into the final day of competition, “I look a 45-minute nap,” she says with a laugh.
Her intense preparation involved an unfathomable amount of research, and she credits The American team and stats researcher with being a huge help.
“Every single person in that rodeo, I had stat sheets on, and if they did good or bad, I knew what I intended to say,” Harrison said. “Of course, it changes in the moment, but I had calls ready to go for every single person we saw that entire week.
“Every night of the preliminary rounds was about 160 new faces. But I also had to remind myself that this is what I grew up doing, so it’s a sport I know so well. So I knew the sport, but it’s wanting to do justice. The amount of work each of those athletes put in just to get to the preliminary rounds was incredible. I knew that moment on TV for them, regardless of how they did, they would have it as a clip to look back on with their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren someday, and I wanted to make sure I did justice to them in that moment for the work that it took them to get there. So that was so important to me, and I carried that throughout all the shows.”
Harrison called The American alongside McBride and Luke Branquinho, a five-time PRCA World Champion in steer wrestling. She works with McBride each week on the Unleash The Beast and has known Branquinho since they were both growing up in southern California.
“From the moment Joe told me that’s who I’d be in the booth with, I thought, ‘We’re golden,’” Harrison said. “I felt like it was my two big brothers and I just talking about rodeo every day. It couldn’t have been better. They both just told me from the beginning that I had it, and they were glad I was there. They gave me a lot of motivation and a lot of confidence. Just listening to the two of them in the booth together, I felt my job was just to allow them to have their personalities shine because they just had such great stuff and knowledge to share. So it made for a great time, and I’m already looking forward to a reunion, I hope.”
Lack of sleep aside, Harrison is thrilled with how the experience went. Though she was the first woman to call a rodeo, she’s well aware of the other women that came before her in different roles and is honored to join them and continue to open doors for the next generation.
“My goal was always just to do the best I could at my job and to share the best stories I could along the way,” Harrison said. “So when that moment happened, and I was told I was the first, it made me speechless for a moment, because it was never a goal of mine. My goal was just to be the hardest worker and the best I could at my job. So having that come along the way, it feels surreal is the best way to describe it. It’s not something that I think I ever imagined could happen.
“Feeling like I was in a position where hopefully it’s the first of many is really neat. To be able to come in there, to do it justice, and hopefully open so many doors that all of the young women that I get messages from see there’s not just one route to go. You don’t have to just do sidelines. You can host shows. You can call rodeos. You can go every route you can imagine in this sport, if this is the sport you’re passionate about and want to tell stories in. And that was one of my goals going in, was hoping that it would open those doors and inspire that next generation to say, ‘See? There’s so much more we can do.’”