Women in Sports Who Are Changing the Game

This story is a capstone project by CU Boulder’s News Corps students Breah Conradson, Kenzie Cole and Lacey Daniell.

On a typical weekday at the University of Colorado’s football facility, athletic trainer Lauren Askevold moves from the training tables to the turf, preparing and assisting players for practice. She’s one of only a handful of women in the room, and specifically one of the few nationwide working full-time on a Division I football staff.

With women making up less than a quarter of sports reporters and under one-third of college coaches nationwide, men still dominate the sidelines, the press box, and nearly every position of power in athletics. Askevold’s presence alone is a reminder of how far women in college athletics still have to go. Fifty years after Title IX promised equality for athletes in college, its progress on the field has yet to be replicated in the workplace. 

“Being a woman in sports means being in the minority,” she says. “But we can do it just like a man can.”

Beginning her journey more than 12 years ago, Askevold has worked across a variety of programs and environments, each shaping her into the professional she is today. Across the Power Five landscape, women like her are statistical outliers, proving that gender gaps in college athletics extend farther than the field. But for Askevold, these disparities aren’t just numbers; they’ve been lived experiences. 

“I had a lot of people doubting me,” she recalled. “I had a lady at one of my jobs tell me, ‘Maybe wear baggier clothes, or don’t do your hair or makeup, because you’re bringing too much attention to yourself.’”

A USAFacts analysis shows that in 2020, 95% of men’s college teams were led by male head coaches, while less than half of women’s teams had female head coaches. Women held only 8% of assistant coaching roles on men’s teams. The Women’s Sports Foundation’s landmark report “Beyond X’s and O’s” reveals the deeper trend, in which females now hold fewer than 23% of all NCAA coaching positions. In 1972, women coached more than 90% of women’s teams. By 2014, that number had fallen to 43%.

At Colorado, Askevold has carved out her place, backed specifically by a coaching staff that values her expertise and a head coach who’s made space for women to lead. Haley Durmer, chief business officer for the Colorado Rapids, is another one of those rare leaders. 

“Unfortunately, I am one of the first CBOs, if you take all of the sports in America that is a woman,” Durmer said. “Generally, a sign says leadership does not come as easy to women as it does men.”

Whether it’s on camera, behind the mic, or in the front office, other women across Colorado sports are confronting those same barriers in different forms and they share a common fight: earning respect in an industry still built to doubt them.

“I was taken double not seriously as a woman and a cheerleader,” Romi Bean, sports Anchor & Reporter at CBS Colorado, said. “[But] I did not take no for an answer.”

As the first female lead sports anchor in Denver TV history, Bean notes that her transition from being a Broncos cheerleader to the anchor desk at CBS was far from seamless. 

“You have to let your work speak for itself; my very first mentor said that to me when I first started,” Bean said. “You need to work twice as hard as everybody else, because if you make a mistake or you pronounce a name wrong, people are just going to come down on you twice as hard.”

Bean’s experience captures the quiet pressure that still defines success for many women in sports media. Still, she is quick to point out the importance of a changing culture. 

“It feels like for a long time there were so few roles that you had to force yourself to be someone you weren’t,” she said. “I think we’re at a time now where authenticity is the biggest factor in whether you’re going to make it or not.”

This movement extends beyond television screens and press boxes; it has consumed the digital spaces that the newest generation of women have begun building their own communities from the ground up.  

“Sports are a club for girls, not just for the boys. We represent those who like, play and work in sports,” said Delaney Galbraith, CEO and founder of Sports Girls Club. “Whether you’re a fan, athlete, or professional, you have a home with us.”

At just 25 years old, Galbraith has built a multifaceted company. Through apparel, events, media and more, Sports Girls Club has become a hub for women who love sports. What began as a college podcast has evolved into a thriving online community with more than 180,000 followers and a simple message: women belong in every part of the game. 

Galbraith’s journey in sports began at the University of Alabama, where she worked with the club hockey team and quickly noticed how few women held roles behind the scenes. After she took on a variety of roles that sparked her passion for the industry, she knew she wanted to work in sports, even when it wasn’t always seen as normal for women to do so.

“When I started college in sports marketing, it was still a little taboo for women to be interested in that, let alone major in it,” she said. The idea for Sports Girls Club first came to life during Galbraith’s freshman year when she shared on Snapchat that she wanted to create a space for women who love sports to feel seen and celebrated. 

“There were no stats out there,” she said. “I can count on my hands how many girls I know that like sports.”

That absence of data isn’t just anecdotal, it’s a wider cultural gap than most realize. According to Morning Consult’s 2023 National Tracking Poll, 44% of men identify as avid sports watchers compared to just 15% of women. Women, however, lead as casual fans, with 50% saying they follow sports occasionally versus 42% of men. Yet more than a third of women (36%) say they don’t watch sports at all, compared to only 14% of men.

The numbers tell one story, but the culture tells another. For many women, the issue isn’t a lack of interest, it’s a lack of belonging. Galbraith’s goal was to flip that dynamic, yet the condescension persisted.

“People would ask, ‘Are you there for the players?’” Galbraith says. 

Those questions weren’t just offhand comments, they reflected a deeper skepticism about women’s credibility in sports spaces. For Galbraith, Sports Girls Club became a response to every moment she was underestimated; a space where women could love sports loudly, unapologetically and without explanation. 

Her experience wasn’t an outlier. Across the industry, women were hearing versions of that same question: Do you even belong here? And while some responded by fighting for credibility inside the system, more women, like Lily Shimbashi, built something entirely new.

In 2020, Shimbashi was unpacking boxes in her New York apartment with a newborn on her hip when she came across an old business plan she had written in college. At a moment in her life when she felt most stretched thin, that document became a reminder of the sports world she once loved, and the one she had grown disillusioned with.

Before she became the founder of Sports-ish, a women-focused sports media company that blends traditional sports coverage with the cultural stories, personality moments and off-field “ish” that make fans care, Shimbashi had broken into traditional sports media. She worked in NBA production, sat in editorial meetings and did everything she could to get her foot in the door. What she found instead was a culture that made her question whether she truly belonged.

“One night in the TV truck, we had this female broadcaster, sideline reporter…she was practicing her questions on air,” Shimbashi began. “One of the graphics men next to me started to talk about how, and in his words, he used stupid, her questions always were, and how she had such a low basketball IQ. I was kind of looking around like, ‘We’re not gonna put up with this, are we?’”

She had never felt out of place in sports, especially after growing up with four brothers and a father who worked in the industry, until that moment. The skepticism followed her beyond the truck. 

“I always got those questions growing up; ‘Oh, you’re a sports fan? Prove it. Name five players.’ But… I loved those questions, because I could,” Shimbashi said. “But at some point, I thought, ‘Why did I ever have to? Why did I ever have to prove my legitimacy as a sports fan to be considered valid in the industry?’” That realization led to a breaking point. “So I drove home that night and was like, I don’t know if I want to go into this path where I’ll be judged by men on their couches for the rest of my life.”

While she continued to grapple with the question of identity, Shimbashi had an added layer: motherhood. For generations, women in athletics and sports media have been told, subtly or explicitly, that motherhood and career ambition cannot coexist. Even off the field, women in sports journalism faced unspoken assumptions that motherhood would make them less committed, less available, less serious.

“I have a newborn, and I’m looking at him one day, feeding him, and thinking to myself, am I done pursuing my dream? Am I, like, completely just a mom now? Is that my identity?” Shimbashi said. 

For the first time, the question wasn’t whether she was good enough, it was whether the industry would ever allow space for her to be both. But, that conflict became a turning point. 

“I really had this moment of reflection…is this the end?” Shimbashi recalled. “Am I going to pursue broadcasting, or am I going to kind of pivot my dream and start this business that I’ve been thinking about for truly years?”

In the end, motherhood became the very reason she moved forward, not the thing that held her back. “I decided to just go for it, because I think…it would honestly be naive of me to think that I could convince my kids to pursue their dreams if they had not seen their mom do so,” she said. 

What started as a moment of doubt on her living room floor became the blueprint for Sportsish, the women-centered sports media company she would build from scratch. Four years later, the community she once feared she might not ever belong to is one she now leads: more than 264,000 Instagram followers, over 2,000 Substack subscribers, 20,000 Facebook followers and a 4.9-star podcast audience.

Sportsish has become exactly what she once needed: a space where women can love sports loudly, casually, obsessively, or somewhere in between, without being asked to prove they belong.

Still, the biases Shimbashi pushed back against don’t disappear once women step in front of a camera or onto a network set. The story starts long before the stat sheet, but rather in the ways girls are taught what belongs to them. Those lessons echo through every level of the game.

Lauren Gardner knows that lesson well. A Denver native and CU Boulder alum, she’s now one of the few women anchoring national sports coverage for MLB Network, Apple TV+ and NHL Network. 

“I’ve been asked so many times, ‘Do you even like sports?’” Gardner said. “I’m like, what do you mean, do I even like sports? Why do you think I’m here? I love it. This is my passion. Or, ‘Do you even know anything about baseball?’ Or, ‘Who gives you your questions?’ It’s just frustrating, because everyone’s looking for you to mess up.”

Women remain vastly underrepresented in sports media, holding only 20.9% of sports reporting jobs nationwide, based on 2021 statistics from Zippia. A decade earlier, that number was only 19.87%, showing how slowly the industry’s gender gap has narrowed.

Those numbers aren’t abstract – and that kind of questioning, of her knowledge, her preparation, even her right to belong, became motivation.

“It pushes you to be better,” she says. “You have to be more prepared, you have to be more knowledgeable, and you have to be almost better at your craft in a lot of ways, in order for people to see you.”

It’s a pressure familiar to Olivia Moody, better known as Liv Moods; a Colorado-based sports betting content creator and host of her own sports podcast show, Mood Swings. Moody has built a loyal following across social media, where her analysis of sports mixes with humor, authenticity and sharp insight. Her success has come with both support and scrutiny, where she has personally had to navigate the preconceived ideas about women’s credibility and perception in sports. 

“There’s probably men that watch me because I have curves,” she says. “And there’s men that watch me because they actually care what I think about the Broncos.” 

Her statement is not merely a cheap shot, it indicates a reflection of systemic misogyny that is embedded in the industry. This persistent issue reflects how women’s expertise in sports often exists under a microscope that women are rarely, if ever, placed beneath. It’s as if the same confidence that earns men respect, makes women the target for dismissal or sexualization. 

According to a 2024 Knight Foundation study, it was found that 58% of social media discourse about female analysts focused on attire or physique, compared to 6% for men. For Moody, that imbalance is more than numbers on a chart, it’s a daily reality of being both a brand and boundary breaker in a space that wasn’t traditionally built for her.

“You just have to get past that uncomfortable awkward feeling of me being a woman in this space,” she says. “And we may actually be friends.”

That kind of resilience and the ability to thrive in a space not designed to include you has become a shared experience among women in sports. For some, like Bean, it’s not just about being visible, but about staying visible long enough to change the system from within.

“A lot of women felt like they had to be someone they weren’t just to make it in this business, and I’m so grateful for their sacrifice,” Bean said. “What they did has allowed all of us to be ourselves, and now we’re at a stage where there’s this great movement of women empowering women.”

Her words speak to the double bind that Moody describes online: women must be authoritative, but never “too confident,” visible, but never “too much.” Both women navigate an industry that continues to measure credibility through a gendered lens, one that expects professionalism to look like conformity.

The same pressures that follow women through locker rooms and production trucks also follow women into boardrooms, law firms, tech companies, newsrooms and every workplace where power has historically flowed in one direction. Any woman reading this, in sports or not, has likely lived her own version of these moments: the condescension disguised as curiosity, the need to over-prepare, the expectation to prove expertise that men are simply given. 

For every woman who has had to speak louder to be heard, or work twice as hard to be seen, there are more women like the ones above; carving out space, setting new standards and refusing to shrink themselves to fit an outdated mold.

Women are not guests in these spaces, they are architects of what comes next.

“Women are changing the game,” Askevold says. “We are more creative, we are more business-like, we are bosses.”