Marcia Neville, who had “no rival” in Colorado prep sportscasting, honored with Dorothy Mauk Pioneer Award

When Marcia Neville dropped in on her helicopter, Colorado high school athletes knew they had arrived.

Long before the Denver sports media market was populated with talented women, Neville flew alone with ambition, a microphone and innumerable iconic entrances to football games and championship pep rallies across the state.

“In terms of the television beat (for preps), there was no one else that could equal her,” said Altitude host Vic Lombardi, who worked with Neville at Channel 4. “She had no rival.”

Neville became Colorado’s first female sportscaster when she arrived at Channel 4 in 1983. That was the start of a 26-year run covering high school sports that led to her selection to the CHSAA Hall of Fame and the Colorado Coaches of Girls Sports Hall of Fame — with plenty of stories and inspiration for future generations along the way.

“She was a huge influence on ‘seeing is believing’ for me,” recalled Smoky Hill alumna Jenny Cavnar, who last season became the first woman to serve as the primary play-by-play voice for an MLB team.

“With her being the prep queen, I got to see her at a lot of my dad’s baseball games when he was coaching. I have a vivid memory of one time (when I was around 9 years old), Marcia and her cameraman were there and got through the gate before me and got to talk to my dad before I got there. I was like, ‘That’s the job I need.’”

On Sunday, the trailblazing Neville is getting her due again.

She will be presented with the Dorothy Mauk Pioneer Award by Sportswomen of Colorado as recognition for the sportscaster’s longtime promotion of girls and women’s sports. The honor is named after the groundbreaking Denver Post scribe Dorothy Mauk, the first full-time woman sportswriter at a major U.S. metropolitan daily newspaper.

“Has anybody else swooped in on a helicopter to award and recognize local athletes?” said Jennifer Anderson-Ehrlich, the executive director of Sportswomen of Colorado. “Marcia is a tireless advocate in promoting and gaining visibility for females in sport across Colorado. She’s always been relentless in her pursuit of that, and I’m not sure that there’s been anyone else like her, since her.”

Throughout her Emmy-winning career, Neville’s helicopter entrances became her signature. Her “Skylights” show used the rotorcraft to cover multiple football games each Friday, and she also flew in to schools to participate in hundreds of pep rallies to honor a team that won a state championship.

Her coverage spanned the state, from the metro’s biggest schools to smaller programs in rural communities, across thousands of high school games, events and celebrations.

“My senior year at Holy Family, we were playing Denver Christian in basketball and the Marcia Neville crew was there, and we were like, ‘This is it. This is heaven,’” Lombardi said. “This is how you know you’re big-time.’

Neville’s tenure at Channel 4 (24 years) and FOX31 (two years) coincided with the careers of a couple of prep sportswriting giants in The Denver Post’s Neil Devlin and The Rocky Mountain News’ Scott Stocker. Her local debut came as Channel 4 (now known as CBS Colorado) was revising its newsroom strategy by hiring reporters for specific beats.

The strategy worked. By the mid-90s, Neville helped Channel 4 catch up with 9News in market share, according to former Channel 4 general manager Roger Ogden.

“I always thought a reporter who would focus on prep sports would have some real cache,” Ogden said. “We needed someone who was good as a reporter, but also had the energy and dedication to remain with that beat indefinitely. Marcia convinced us early on that that’s all she cared about, and she’d be dedicated, and she’d be in that job as long as she could.”

Along the way, she implemented the Mr. and Ms. Colorado Basketball Awards, which are still presented annually by The Denver Post. And she and her colleague, Cj Grammer, started Colorado Sportswomen, a quarterly, 30-minute TV program dedicated to stories about female athletes, teams and coaches across all levels.

The show ran from 1993 to 2006. It was born from Neville and Grammer’s observation that the CU women’s basketball teams of the time — consistent NCAA tournament qualifiers under head coach Ceal Barry — got less media attention than the mediocre CU men.

“The exposure we got was a lot due to Marcia Neville,” Barry said. “I was personally very lucky to have her in my corner starting the mid-80s.”

A product of Monroe, N.Y., Neville’s love of sports was stoked by her late mother, Barbara. Neville would hang out with her in the family room on Sundays, calling herself “a captive audience” as Barbara ironed clothes while they watched the NFL together.

When a 14-year-old Neville saw Phyllis George co-host “The NFL Today,” she made up her mind on a career path that led her to “the best job in the state of Colorado.”

“What I loved in particular was my work expanded beyond the athlete, teams and the coaches,” Neville said. “It included the complete school and the community, and I thought that was so important. And I enjoyed the opportunity to introduce our viewers to good kids. There weren’t just ‘rotten kids hanging out at the mall,’ as was said in those days. My reporting was a reminder that there were good young people out there, and that was a really important message to put out.”

Among many career highlights, Neville once made her signature helicopter entrance to the storied Bell Game football rivalry in Pueblo, landing at the 50-yard line at Dutch Clark Stadium to deliver the game ball.

She covered the instant-classic Class 4A boys basketball title game between George Washington and Cherry Creek in 1986. After GW’s dramatic victory, Patriots big man Tracy Jordan picked Neville up and spun her around in elation mid-interview on live TV. She did the first TV interview with Chauncey Billups when he was a freshman at GW, and later did a story on middle schooler Missy Franklin at the beginning of her meteoric rise to Olympic swimming stardom.

Colorado girls high school basketball great Abby Waner Bartolotta called Neville “transformative,” noting the gender that made her a barrier-breaker ultimately was not what made the sportscaster so impactful.

“She’s not who she is because she was the first female. She’s who she is because she was so good at what she does, period,” the former ThunderRidge star said.

Neville got started with Sportswomen of Colorado in 1986 and has remained heavily involved in the organization since her sportscasting career ended in 2009. That’s included serving on the Sportswomen of Colorado advisory board, the selection committee and being the co-presenter at the nonprofit’s annual awards ceremony for more than 30 years.

As Susie Wargin explained, Neville’s influence had a ripple effect on the state’s present crop of female sportscasters.

Wargin, the KOA Broncos reporter whose big career break came as 9News’ prep sports anchor in 2001, said that Marcia’s support during that period eventually sparked her to form a coalition of female sports reporters last year. The group, which features women from across the state, meets a few times a year to network and offer one another support.

“She’s inherently a cheerleader and true champion for women, and it was comforting for me to know she was always there to do that,” Wargin said. “When I got the job at 9, she said to me: ‘I’m over at 4; 4 and 9 don’t like each other very much, but I’m here if you need me.’

“And now, I’m trying to do the same thing for all the women coming up in this market, and promoting us getting together and really getting to know each other better. She laid that groundwork for me to do that.”

What resonated with viewers and peers during Neville’s career still holds true today: The 66-year-old’s salt-of-the-earth approachability that came through in her stories and the countless relationships she developed.

“The most impressive thing for me from watching her over the years is her authenticity,” said Scott Elarton, the former Lamar baseball star and ex-Rockies pitcher. “It always seemed like she genuinely cared about the people she was talking about and the stories she was doing, whether in the city or a small town. And that’s a big reason why she became the legend that she is today.”

Marcia’s Most Memorable

The sportscaster’s standouts from her 26-year career covering Colorado high school sports.

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Sportswomen of Colorado 2024 award winners

The 51st Sportswomen of Colorado banquet is at 4:15 p.m. Sunday at Hyatt Regency DTC.

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