Andraya Carter is a name a lot of sports fans will recognize since her post-Tennessee presence has become a part of national broadcasts from college football to college basketball to the NBA. One of the people who helped her along the way is LaChina Robinson, the co-founder of Rising Media Stars.
Robinson will speak this month to the East Tennessee chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists to discuss why she started Rising Media Stars and how the organization has helped women of color gain positions in sports broadcasting.
While Carter may be the most well-known graduate of Rising Media Stars for local fans, the organization, which began with co-founder Kevin Nixon in 2016, has helped dozens of women across the country gain experience to break into a tough market. The participants receive a final reel of on-camera game day experiences and interviews, which is an absolute must when the job search begins.
LaChina Robinson
Like Carter, Robinson is a former women’s college basketball player. Carter wore orange and white at Tennessee. Robinson wore the gold and black of Wake Forest.
The discussion with Robinson will take place Tuesday, Feb. 21, from 12-1 p.m. via Zoom, and the event is open to the public. The Zoom link is here with more information here.
Robinson joined ESPN in 2009 as a college basketball analyst and reporter, and her work expanded into coverage of women’s basketball major events, including the NCAA Tournament, Women’s Final Four and WNBA playoffs, finals and draft.
The forum is being held in February as part of Black History Month and to underscore ETSPJ’s efforts to provide programs that are representative and diverse.
LADY VOLS: The current basketball team has a bye this week – meaning there is no SEC game Thursday – and will get back on the court Sunday, Feb. 2, at 2 p.m. against Vanderbilt. It also will be the Play4Kay game to raise awareness for breast cancer and the Kay Yow Cancer Fund, so the Tennessee players will be in pink uniforms, setting up the Crayola combination of orange and pink in Thompson-Boling Arena. (As a breast cancer survivor of now 10 years, the game holds significance, but it always takes my eyes a bit to adjust.)
Jordan Horston makes a pass in the 2022 pink game against Vanderbilt, which also wore pink uniforms. (Tennessee Athletics)
Yow, a close friend of the late Pat Summitt, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987. The North Carolina State women’s basketball coach established a foundation and battled recurrences until her death in 2009, always following her signature statement: When life kicks you, let it kick you forward.
The bye comes at a good time for Tennessee, which lost 91-90 on Monday in double overtime to Mississippi State in Starkville. The Lady Vols are 9-2 in the SEC with five regular season games left.
Even with Monday’s loss, Tennessee was No. 20 in the NET, which the NCAA uses for postseason bids. The Lady Vols also hover at No. 1 or No. 2 in strength of schedule. The top 25 media and coaches polls, neither of which include Tennessee, are conversation pieces. The NCAA ignores them when seeding teams.
CANDACE UPDATE (AGAIN): Candace Parker has become a regular update topic in this space. The former Tennessee player and new member of the Las Vegas Aces as noted in this column last week, will become the first woman to serve in a game analyst role for the NBA All-Star Game.
Parker, who is also a two-time WNBA champion, works for Turner Sports as an analyst and commentator for NBA games and is deserving of the selection. But it’s 2023. Why is she the first woman in this role?
Candace Parker
Parker posted on Instagram: Truly grateful and not taking any of this for granted. Cheers to many, many more and these firsts not being a thing but a norm.
The NBA All-Star Game, which will be at Vivint Arena in Salt Lake City, will be broadcast Sunday, Feb. 19, at 8 p.m. on TNT. Tune in.
Parker also chatted Tuesday with media after signing with the Aces and was joined by Nikki Fargas, a former Lady Vol player and assistant coach who is now president of the Las Vegas WNBA franchise.
Fargas, who is from Oak Ridge and was then known as Nikki Caldwell, recruited Parker in high school as a teenager to go to Tennessee and again 20 years later to choose Las Vegas.
“She’s very persuasive in that way, and I believe in the full circle,” Parker said.
When Caldwell left Knoxville – she wasn’t married yet – she became the head coach at UCLA right after Parker was drafted by the Los Angeles Sparks and met Justin Fargas on the West Coast. A random note for old-timers: He played football for the Oakland Raiders and his father, Antonio Fargas, played Huggy Bear on the TV series “Starsky and Hutch.” The couple have a daughter, Justice, who was born in 2012.
Parker has a teenager daughter, Lailaa, who was born in 2009.
“We lived in the same community,” Parker said. “She visited Lailaa when I had her in the hospital. She was one of the few people that babysat Lailaa.”
“She’s alright as a basketball player,” Nikki Fargas deadpanned, prompting laughter from Parker. “Candace has always been family, so I am in a unique chair having spent 25 years at the collegiate level and being able to see Candace Parker when she was 13 years old and see her evolve into the beautiful soul she is today.”
The full exchange can be watched below.
The long orange line never breaks.
Maria M. Cornelius, a writer/editor at Moxley Carmichael since 2013, started her journalism career at the Knoxville News Sentinel and began writing about the Lady Vols in 1998. In 2016, she published her first book, “The Final Season: The Perseverance of Pat Summitt,” through The University of Tennessee Press.