Atlanta United’s staffers weren’t expecting it. FOX’s production team weren’t expecting it. In fact, it’s not even clear that Josef Martinez himself was expecting it.
Yet what was less surprising about the moment in August 2019 when the Five Stripes’ Venezuelan star gave his first-ever live television interview without a translator, was who made the moment happen: Katie Witham.
“It stunned Atlanta's radio crew, and their PR staff,” recalled John Strong, Witham’s friend and FOX colleague for the past five years.
So how exactly did she convince the famously intense striker to step outside his comfort zone — and do so fresh off the sound and fury of a match, no less?
“We had been pestering him for a long time: ‘Josef, your English is better than mine, come on, you can do this,’” Witham explained during an in-depth conversation with MLSsoccer.com. “Before we went on camera I complimented him on his hair and I said, ‘How did you just play 90-plus minutes and your hair looks that good, and mine looks like this and I didn't do anything but stand on the sideline?’
“Probably 20 seconds before we came back from commercial break — and we were live — he said ‘alright, I’ll do it in English.’ And I was blown away. And so I guess that's my secret: I'm just real and I'm honest, and I try to take them out of that nervous moment of having a camera in your face, and just have a conversation.”
That’s a pretty good summary of the manner that has charmed some of the biggest personalities in North American soccer during their most heated moments, gleaning insight for viewers in a notoriously difficult format: the sideline interview.
“I think Katie is very much, I hate to say underappreciated, but I don't think people just tuning into a game necessarily understand everything it is that she's doing,” said Strong, noting that Witham has worked similar magic with Carlos Vela, Tata Martino, Gregg Berhalter and others. “There's been different sideline reporters for different national broadcasts over the years. There's never been someone who has accomplished what she has done, which is to have the universal trust and respect as a journalist that she does.”
It’s undergirded by an empathy that Witham says dates back to the Ohio native’s own playing days as a defender at Capital University, an NCAA Division III program near Columbus.
“Before every single in-game interview or postgame interview — because that's when it's the most tense — I put myself back in those shoes. I put my cleats back on for just a second and I think, ‘OK, this is the question I have to ask – how would I handle being asked that?’” she said.
“I learned pretty quickly early on: It's not what you say, but how you say it. And so I take into mind the athlete or coach mentality and how they're going to hear this, and then how I can raise it to get you, the viewer at home, the best response. So those are my favorite parts of the game for me personally, and I like the challenge.”
She admits that some players and coaches remain stubbornly suspicious of the entire concept, particularly in-game interviews, a relatively rare practice in sports media. Her combination of meticulous preparation and affable personality has reaped rewards, though. She recounts a memory from the wild 3-3 draw between LAFC and the Philadelphia Union earlier this year.
“That was the most insane match that I've been a part of in a long time, to the point where I’ve got Jim Curtin on the sideline after a goal turning around like, ‘did that just happen?’ – like commentating to me, basically, about things that are going on,” Witham revealed. “Then we pestered him in the 65th, 70th minute to do an actual on-camera interview during the game. And he was great, and he talked about what adjustments they were going to make to influence the game. And where do you get that kind of access? You're not getting a lot of that in any other sport.
“I think MLS is unique when it comes to that, because they welcome that,” she added, noting that little to nothing of the sort exists in baseball, where she worked before her current gig. “Some coaches are better with it than others and we pick and choose our moments, we try to do it in the right moments that bring you good television and are least disruptive to the actual game as possible … We want to keep pushing the envelope in a professional way.”
As strong a reputation as she’s carved out in soccer, and sports broadcasting in general, this isn’t exactly where college-age Katie thought she’d be right now. It took some timely advice from her college coach, Dwight Burgess, who also just happens to have been the TV voice of Columbus Crew SC from their founding until this year.
“I thought I was going to be the next Diane Sawyer; I wanted to go into news,” she said. “And then I interned in news and just learned right off the bat that that was not the space for me. And it actually turned me off to the point where I was changing my major, I was switching to PR and marketing.
“[Burgess] said, ‘Why are you changing your major? Don't do that just yet. Why don't you look into sports – and you've got the Columbus Crew right here in your backyard. Why don't you see if they have an internship?’”
So Witham became the first broadcasting intern in Crew history, which led to her becoming the first sideline reporter in Crew history and set her on her current trajectory.
“I kind of stumbled upon this, and then I got stuck in it, and I'm so happy that I'm still stuck in it,” she said.
She’s earned further respect for maintaining the grind through pregnancy – still rare territory for women in the industry – including working MLS Cup 2018 just a month and a half before the due date for her son Owen, and returning to action less than five weeks after giving birth.
“Those are difficult things to do,” said Strong, “and it just doesn't faze her. She delivers every single week.”
While she’s also done color commentary on women’s college soccer broadcasts and FOX assigned her some play-by-play work during the 2018 FIFA Under-20 Women's World Cup “just as an experiment,” she says she’s happiest down at field level.
“I am so programmed to think in 20-, 25-second bursts. I’m giving you the information I can and then I have to trim it, or I have to say it in basically 20 seconds,” said Witham with a laugh. “And then all of a sudden you stick me in a booth and I have the whole game to talk and it's like, oh my goodness. So while I much appreciate everybody else's role in this, I do feel most at home on the sideline or hosting the show. That's where I really have fun.
“I enjoy being on the sidelines because it makes me feel like I'm almost playing again. And I'm as close to the action as I can be, literally a few feet away. So I feel like I'm in my element, I get the adrenaline and I'm in on every touch down there which is so, so much fun for me.”
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