Maria Marino couldn’t quite overhear Geno Auriemma’s instructions to his team in the huddle. The 10,000 raucous fans packed into Gampel Pavilion seemed to be all screaming at once, and didn't appear to notice that she had a job to do.
“If I can talk about something that Geno was focusing on in a timeout, that’s something that people wouldn't otherwise know,” Marino said. “Sometimes I can’t really hear because it’s just so loud in the building.”
Courtesy: Maria Marino
Marino has been the UConn women’s basketball sideline reporter for SportsNet New York since 2019. In her first season, she grew accustomed to logging hours at airports, on flights, and in hotel rooms. Even home games often required a hotel stay in Connecticut, as Marino didn’t trust herself to stay awake for the near three-hour drive home to New Jersey following a night game.
This season, her coverage of the historic basketball program was confined to one room: Studio 42 at the SNY studios in New York City, as COVID-19 restricted the number of media personnel permitted to attend games.
Marino said it was difficult to replicate the energy of a sold-out Gampel Pavilion on game day.
“Basketball games are loud in normal times,” Marino said. “You hear the basketball pounding on the floor. They are running so hard you can almost feel the floor move. You can feel the energy in the stands. You hear everything so vividly.”
The first few broadcasts of the 2021-21 season were challenging for Marino, as she adjusted to watching the games on TV and reporting from an empty Studio 42.
Photos: Kristan Bravo
“It’s just not the same as being at the game and around all the buzz,” Marino said. “It was hard for me to focus. I felt like I did fine, but not great. I just wanted it to be smoother.”
Marino had to adapt to an entirely new “rehearsal workflow” in the hours leading up to tip-off. Before a game in the 2019-20 season, she applied her makeup in a hotel room while blasting music, namely Taylor Swift’s 2019 album, “Lover.”
“I’m the type of person who, when I like an album, I play it over and over again,” Marino said. “I found that this album was upbeat enough that it got my energy flowing.”
This routine allowed Marino to warm up and “get in the zone,” as she said, before heading to the arena to appear on the broadcast.
“I really like to dial in, lock in, and focus on the task at hand,” Marino said.
Makeup application, along with many other aspects of game preparation, took on a different look this season. Marino bounced between SNY’s green room and makeup room, remaining conscious of the studio’s social distancing guidelines.
Photos: Kristan Bravo
Sharing the space proved to be an obstacle, as UConn often played on the same days as Baseball Night in New York, Mets Hot Stove and Geico Sportsnite, other regular programming on SNY.
“Everything in the studio since COVID-19 is a lot more stressful than it used to be,” Marino said. "Every single thing across the board from traveling there on the train, mask wearing, filling out our health check forms, checking our temperature. It’s all these little things that add up and make it challenging.”
This season, Marino found herself searching for an empty space in the office to get in the zone. She leaned on familiar techniques of reading and rehearsing her notes.
“I do think after the first three or four games, I got into a rhythm,” Marino said. “It’s a skill you need as a reporter or broadcaster and I think that’s something people don’t realize. You have to be able to block out distractions. You have to be able to focus in a stressful environment."
While it was difficult at first to foster the energy once provided by a full arena, Marino was at least glad to be away from boisterous pep bands -- a staple at college basketball games.
“Whatever arena I go to, I like to be stationed on the opposite side of the band because sometimes it’s so loud that I’m like ‘I can’t hear myself think!’”
SNY has been carrying UConn women’s basketball games since 2012, with Marino joining the broadcast team in 2019. The network reached a multi-year agreement with Fox Sports in 2020 to continue live game broadcasts, in addition to the UConn Women’s Basketball Pre Game Show and UConn Women’s Basketball Post Game Show.
“The relationship between SNY and UConn is very strong,” Marino said. “We work really hard to tell their stories, and they are receptive to giving us what we need to do that.”
Marino was drawn to SNY because of its growing coverage of the UConn women’s basketball program, even though she wasn’t exposed to women’s sports growing up. She spent her formative years watching the Yankees, Giants and Duke men’s basketball. Marino was introduced to the women’s game by her older sister.
“She was my idol as a kid,” Marino said. “I would go to her (basketball) games more so than my brothers.' She’s what made basketball cool for me.”
Each of SNY’s 16 scheduled regular-season games made it to air prior to the overall suspension of sports last March due to COVID-19. The network had plans to extend its coverage to 19 games during the 2020-21 season, but cancellations brought that number back down to 16. While not able to expand on its number of televised games, SNY found new ways to connect with audience members.
The Digital Expansion of UConn on SNY
The SNYUconn Instagram and Twitter accounts were created in April 2020 to increase engagement with viewers. As Marino was no longer attending games in-person, she was no longer able to do in-game live hits from the sidelines during breaks in the action.
“It was kind of a bummer at first, but I tried to let that go and focus on the fact that I had an opportunity to do something different and help improve the following of that Twitter,” Marino said.
Marino recorded less formal versions of in-game reports on her phone and sent them to SNY’s social media producers to be published on the new accounts.
According to SNY, the 2020-21 season delivered record-high performances for UConn specific content on its digital platforms, including Instagram and Twitter. SNY wrapped up its UConn regular season coverage with over 3.59M UConn video views, 50.8K social interactions, and 8.09M social impressions across all of its platforms.
Marino says she was happy with the average engagement numbers on her in-game videos posted on the SNYUConn Twitter.
“We don't have a ton of followers on that account yet,” Marino said. “It’s steadily growing, but it’s not like our main SNY account that has over a hundred thousand followers. The main SNY handle would always retweet the videos to try and draw more people to the SNYUConn page.”
In addition to record-setting digital numbers, UConn women's basketball games broadcasted on SNY hit record numbers of household impressions for the Connecticut and New York areas. A sample size from Jan. 19 through Feb. 10 shows a steady increase in HH impressions from 37,820 to 54,554 in Connecticut, with one slight decrease on Feb. 5.
Data courtesy: SNY | Graphic: Kristan Bravo
While Marino hurdled many changes this season, she said the time put into her reporting has remained consistent. She still had access to (virtual) player interviews and kept on top of the team’s day-to-day news.
“It starts well before game day,” Marino said. “There's this general preparation of having a knowledge base about everything that’s going on and identifying a couple of angles that I might be interested in focusing on during the actual game broadcast.”
Another consistency Marino noted was Auriemma.
“Geno was his classic self. He would always give good sound bites and say funny things. It was good that we had our social media editors able to clip those off and get them out,” Marino said.
Both Auriemma and his players provided content that resulted in engagement spikes. Marino’s first quarter video on Dec. 29 was her most-viewed on Twitter this season, as she recapped Christyn Williams’ 1,000th career point against #18 DePaul.
While Marino is hopeful she’ll be able to get back to the sidelines in November, she took pride in contributing to SNY’s record-setting digital numbers from Studio 42.
“I’m just happy that the ratings are doing well and women’s sports are doing well,” Marino said. “To get to discuss these basketball players, have conversations with them, and share any part of their stories is my honor.”