For much of her childhood, ESPN was must-watch TV in Keiana Martin’s household. She and her dad caught the day’s sports highlights while getting ready for school and when winding down for the night.
Now, more than 30 years later, the San Diego State University alumna is on the other side of the screen. She made her debut on ESPN as a SportsCenter anchor on June 2.
“It’s still super surreal,” Martin said. “This is what my family would watch after (sports) games. … Something that was such a big part of my everyday life now is my everyday life.”
A Los Angeles native from the Carson neighborhood, Martin grew up in a sports-centered family. She played softball and volleyball and was a part of her high school’s athletic training group at Long Beach Polytechnic, which fueled her passion for working with athletes. She initially attended SDSU to study kinesiology to become an athletic trainer, but later switched to integrated marketing communication to pursue sports marketing.
She said she didn’t begin diving into journalism until after graduating in 2010, when she took broadcast journalism courses and worked for the Berkeley Unified School District to sideline radio football games.
While she had the opportunity to study at New York University and UC Irvine, Martin said she chose SDSU because of the proximity to Los Angeles, the weather and the diverse culture. She said attending Chargers, Padres and Aztecs games, and witnessing the fan culture, helped solidify her dreams of working in sports.
“Just being in that environment, watching people from all different walks of life come together for one team and one goal, I literally love it,” she said.
Martin started out covering sports for junior colleges and high schools, then interned for the Kansas City Chiefs in 2015, which she said launched her career. She then reported for the Denver Nuggets, the 49ers — her and her dad’s favorite team — the MLB and MSG Networks, working with teams such as the New York Knicks and then CBS Sports, before landing at ESPN in May.
She’s covered major sports events, including March Madness, World’s Strongest Man and two Super Bowls with the 49ers.
But before she landed bigger roles, Martin said she received hundreds of rejections until the Chiefs took her on, partly because of a vlog she created on YouTube in 2014 to report on sports.
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Reporting for the 49ers was especially sentimental, Martin said; it was around that time, in 2018, that her father, Kirk, died.
“I feel like a lot of what I do is to honor my dad,” Martin said. “That’s why I think everything resonates a little more deeply with me because the things that I did with him and I enjoyed with him, I am experiencing now. It’s a way to kind of keep his legacy living through me.”
Martin said she especially enjoys learning about the people underneath the mask of helmets and jerseys.
“These are people with their own stories, their own personalities, their own experiences, and that’s what draws a person closer to a team,” Martin said. “My job is to connect the audience to the story, or the athlete, or the team.”
When she appears on air for ESPN, which is based in Bristol, Conn., she said she’s not only representing herself, but a larger community as a Black American woman. She remembered watching sideline journalists Pam Oliver and Lisa Salters and thinking, “I wish I could do something like that. Why can’t I do something like that?”
“I hope that when people watch me, they think the exact same thing,” she said.
“I do carry that weight, and I carry that pressure, but I’m so excited and glad to. It’s an honor,” she said.
Moments before Martin goes live on air, she said she looks at the SportsCenter “SC” logo as a reminder of her journey.
“It wasn’t a pretty journey whatsoever,” she said. “It’s just a little reminder of this path that I went through to get to where I’m at and how grateful I am to be here.”
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