WOMEN CHANGING THE GAME

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. Her presence on the sidelines of one of college football’s most-watched programs signals a shift. Yet still, she remains part of a small minority of women who have earned a seat in rooms that long shut them out.

Haley Durmer, chief business officer for the Colorado Rapids, is 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 says. “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,” says Romi Bean. “[But] I did not take no for an answer.”

Now the lead sports anchor at CBS Colorado and the first female lead sports anchor in Denver TV history, Bean sheds light on how 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 says. “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. Every on-air correction or misstep risks being seen not as an individual error, but as ammunition towards the narrative that women don’t equally belong in the space. 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 says. “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,” says 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 recalls.

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 says. “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.

Morgan Montgomery, former Director of Player Services for the Denver Nuggets, adds on, saying that even when women earn a seat at the table, they still have to fight to be heard. 

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,” She continues. “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,” She stated. “But at some point, I thought, ‘Why did I ever have to?"

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?” She shared. 

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? 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?” Shimbashi recounted.

In the end, motherhood became the very reason she moved forward, not the thing that held her back.

Her leap didn’t take her away from sports; it reinvented her place within them. 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.

Before the studio lights and national broadcasts, Gardner spent years in regional markets earning credibility in a culture where every misstep by a woman can feel like confirmation of someone else’s doubt. The skepticism she faced speaks to the undercurrent of the industry, an extra layer of scrutiny that shadows every on-air moment.

“I’ve been asked so many times, ‘Do you even like sports?’” Gardner says. “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.”

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 Romi 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. 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,” Bean says. 

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.

What these women share, whether that be across football fields, television studios, production, and digital platforms, is a story that collides in one undeniable truth: this is bigger than sports.

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.

Behind the scenes of our capstone!