Gayle sirens tampa news live
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TAMPA, Fla (WISH) — History will be made on Sunday when Sarah Thomas becomes the first woman to referee in a Super Bowl.
Nearly 35 years ago, Tampa native Gayle Sierens made NFL history too. In 1987 Gayle Sierens became the first woman to call play by play for an NFL regular season game when she called the Chiefs vs. Seahawks for NBC.
“I was a little bit of a ‘nervous Nellie’ when I did that game,” Sierens said. “I just wanted it all to be great because I was so afraid of what the legacy for other women if I were awful so that was heavy on my mind. I just wish we could have seen more woman doing play-by-play sooner. I wish that it had been more of an open door sooner but here we are now the airways are filled with female sportscasters.”
Sierens, a die-hard Buccaneers fan, made her way to the NFL national broadcast booth at just 33 years old. Today, she still stands among an elite handful of women to call the action on Sundays.
“It’s a sweet thing for me and my family,” Sierens said. “It’s a wonderful thing for women and women who particularly love sports and want to be a part of that sports environment. I laughingly say though, ‘oh, I really kicked that door down it only took a hundred years lat
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Before she was a Tampa legend, Gayle Sierens was an NFL trailblazer
TAMPA — It's in a picture frame on a wall in Gayle Sierens' South Tampa home, a home she and her husband have mostly filled with photographs of their three children. But there are photos of Sierens with Pope John Paul II, with Laura Bush, with Oprah, with Bobby Bowden, with Arnold Palmer, part of her long broadcasting career at WFLA-Ch. 8, including 29 years as a news co-anchor. Sierens, a two-time Emmy winner, retired in 2015 as one of the best-known names and faces in Tampa Bay.
Now, back to the memento.
"It's my spotting chart," Sierens said. The kind of crib sheet that sports announcers use for games. She took it off the wall. It's 30 years old. It's in Sierens' handwriting, big block red letters for numbers and names of the 1987 Kansas City Chiefs, with Sierens' notes about players scribbled in blue ballpoint pen. She went through three or four drafts of the chart.
"I didn't want to screw it up," Sierens said with a deep laugh, always her trademark.
Gayle Sierens made history on Dec. 27, 1987. She became the first woman to call play-by-play of an NFL game. Seahawks-Chiefs at Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium. Gayle the experiment. Gayle the trailblazer. She kicked down the door.
No one else came throu
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