NCAA Women’s Final Four: Kerry Callahan To Be First Woman To Produce College Women’s Championship for ESPN

The broadcaster has covered the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship since 1995

This weekend’s NCAA Women’s Final Four and National Championship Game will feature a noteworthy first. A woman will sit in the producer’s chair for the first time since ESPN began broadcasting the Women’s Basketball Tournament in 1995.

Kerry Callahan will be the first woman to serve as producer of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Final Four and Championship when she works at the front bench this weekend. She will be working alongside director Jimmy Platt.

Kerry Callahan will be at the front bench as producer for both Final Four games on Friday and the National Championship Game on Sunday, alongside director Jimmy Platt.

“The opportunity to produce the Women’s Final Four and Championship Game is incredible,” says Callahan. “We have an extremely talented team that I am proud to be a part of. We cannot wait to tell the stories of these amazing women and crown a champion on Sunday.”

Kerry Callahan (second from right) at the Pac-12 Women’s Basketball Tournament in 2019 with (from left) Stanford Women’s Basketball Coach Tara VanDerveer, ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo, and ESPN reporter Holly Rowe

Callahan was slated to produce the NCAA Women’s Final Four last year. That was, of course, before the entire tournament was canceled by the coronavirus pandemic.

“She was 100% the best person for the job,” says ESPN Coordinating Producer Pat Lowry. “We could have picked almost anybody in the company to produce this event, and she was the right person. I worked with her a long time ago on the NBA when she was an associate producer, and she has worked her way up to this point in her career.”

Callahan became a producer at ESPN in 2009 after working as an associate producer for several years.

She was a lacrosse player Notre Dame and, in fact, was one of the key members of the squad that helped transition the women’s program from a club sport to an NCAA-sanctioned team.