Lunch honoring AWSM's interns -- past and present

Sponsor welcome: Fred Brown, ESPN director of production recruitment and talent negotiations
Speaker: Margaret Koy Kistler, the first female sportswriter at a Texas daily newspaper

By Elizabeth McGarr
2007 AWSM intern at Sports Illustrated

Just after the 2007 AWSM interns were introduced and past AWSM interns were recognized, Margaret Koy Kistler, the first female sportswriter at a Texas daily newspaper, stepped to the podium and looked around the room.

“Back in the day, it was me and the boys,” she said. “And look at us now.”

The daughter of a coach, Kistler began working at her hometown newspaper, the Bellville Times, when she was 13 years old. After graduating from the University of Texas in 1967, she worked as a sportswriter for the Abilene Reporter-News.

She had to receive “special dispensation” from the school boards to be admitted into the high school football press boxes.

“Performance overrules prejudice,” she said, explaining how she and other pioneers such as Barbara Jordan, a contemporary of Kistler’s and the first African American woman to serve in the Texas Senate, were able to succeed.

In 1990, Kistler returned to the United States after living abroad for much of the previous decade and was amazed at the progress women had made in sports media.

“It was normal for Julie Ward to be covering Wimbledon,” she said. “It was normal to see Lesley Visser on T.V.”

Her parting words to those gathered: “I say to you: keep marching."

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