Alumna Brenna Greene Blazes Trail in Sports Broadcasting

SPOKANE, Wash. — Brenna Greene (’14) became the first female sports director in Spokane at KREM 2 News late last year, showing that the role of women in sports broadcasting is growing — if slowly. 

“A few years ago a sports director said he had concerns about hiring me because I was a girl, and he was worried that I physically couldn’t handle shooting a whole game with a big camera,” Greene tweeted while covering Washington State University in the Alamo Bowl in December. “Tonight I was the only girl on the sideline shooting. And I did a damn good job.”

Greene joined KREM last July as a weekend sports anchor and reporter after spending the previous two years at KRNV/KRXI in Reno, Nevada. Greene, who hails from Portland, got her first TV job at KRTV/KXLH in Great Falls, Montana.

Ever since she was young, Greene has always been an intense sports fan — whether watching the Olympics, going to University of Oregon football games or reading the newspaper sports section cover-to-cover.

It was not until her junior year in high school that she began to think of becoming a sports reporter. After she was part of the nun ensemble in “The Sound of Music,” Greene said one of the parents of a friend told her she ought to go into television, particularly sports. 

During her time at Gonzaga, Greene was a writer and videographer for the Gonzaga News Service for two years where she handled a variety of writing and video assignments. She says the work prepared her well for a profession in which she is writing often.

“The most important skill I took from (Gonzaga News Service) was learning how to write and getting repetition in writing articles for online because I do that all the time now,” she said. “Writing is a part of my job, even though people probably don’t think it because I’m on TV but it actually is a really big part of my job.”

Even though she appears frequently on the air, Greene said 90 percent of her day is shooting video, producing, writing and editing.

Because GU’s broadcasting department required her to edit, shoot, write and develop other skills, Greene said her education and experience have allowed her to jump right into her profession with confidence.

“I’m really thankful for my time at Gonzaga, I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” she said. “Our broadcasting department is small but we are so mighty and we have alums all over the country at television stations. That is really cool.”

Greene encourages girls and young women to reach for their dreams. There is plenty of room for women in sports broadcasting, Greene said.