Shannon Suzuki, Millennium Hall of Fame

Instead of posting up on the basketball court, ripping a tennis

winner down the doubles alley or batting over .300 in softball, Shannon

Suzuki makes her shots on Prime Time these days.

The 1989 Estancia High Female Athlete of the Year has “decided to play

sports a different way,” having traded her high-tops, racket and glove

for a microphone, script and inside scoop.

Suzuki, 28, is an associate producer for ESPN, working on the

all-sports cable station’s o7 NFL Tonightf7 and going out in the field

for features and profiles.

“That’s how I get my competitive juices up,” Suzuki said by telephone

from Farmington, Conn., about 15 minutes east of Bristol, home of the

famous ESPN Plaza.

Suzuki, always trying to prove herself in a male-dominated arena,

joined ESPN in July 1995, and, about two years ago, was promoted from

production assistant to her current position, which will take her to the

Super Bowl this season in Atlanta and the Pro Bowl in Hawaii.

While ESPN names and faces like Dan Patrick and Rich Eisen are

recognized nationwide, Suzuki works behind the scenes, formulating ideas

for interviews and special segments and editing tape for on-air sound

bites.

But a decade ago, Suzuki was the main attraction for Estancia’s

Eagles, serving as student body president her senior year and finishing

her athletic career with a dozen varsity letters.

Suzuki, the team MVP in tennis and softball, was a standout 5-foot-8

forward on Coach Lisa McNamee’s girls basketball team, which captured

Estancia’s first outright Sea View League championship her junior year.

“I learned everything from (McNamee) fundamentally,” Suzuki said. “She

was very driven and instilled that drive into her players. I enjoyed

playing for her a lot.”

Suzuki, a four-year letter winner in hoops, averaged 12.9 points and

9.3 rebounds per game in 1988-89 as Estancia took third in league and

advanced to the CIF Southern Section playoffs. In the Beverly Hills

Tournament that season, Suzuki scored 28 and 14 points, respectively, in

the semifinals and finals as she earned tournament MVP honors and the

Eagles won the title.

“Shannon is one of the smartest athletes I’ve ever coached,” McNamee

once said. “She’s a total team player and she did a great job for us.”

A third-team All-CIF selection as a sophomore, Suzuki played a two,

three and four, and she “did enjoy that physical type of game” in the

post.

Raised in gymnastics as a child, Suzuki also loved soccer and

volleyball, but had to make a choice about which sports to play upon

entering high school.

Instead of playing volleyball in the fall, Suzuki, who’d taken tennis

lessons when she was young, became one of Estancia’s all-time best

doubles players.

As a senior, Suzuki and her partner went 56-2 for Coach Anna Peterson

and reached the quarterfinals at the prestigious Ojai Valley Tennis

Tournament. Suzuki, the team captain, was named the squad’s co-most

valuable player as the Eagles earned a trip to the CIF playoffs.

In softball, Suzuki was a three-time all-league pick, hitting a

team-high .310 her senior year, while meriting team MVP honors. In her

four years, she played third base, center field and right field, and

occasionally caught.

Suzuki, a member of the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame, celebrating

the millennium, carried a 3.7 grade-point average and won the Suburban

Optimist Club Scholarship, Orange County Club Scholarship and the Student

of the Year Award from the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce. Her parents,

Ed and Aileen, still live in Costa Mesa.

“I miss home a lot,” Suzuki said. “I get homesick during the winter,

because the location (of ESPN) is hard. (Bristol, Conn.) is not exactly a

cosmopolitan town or city. That was the biggest complaint from Keith

(Olbermann, the station’s former o7 SportsCenterf7 anchor who ripped

the city before leaving two years ago).”

Suzuki, who graduated from UC Santa Barbara, said ESPN was “always on”

in college, so she had plenty of names ready when the station’s

recruiting executive, Al Jaffe, interviewed her for a job as production

assistant. She was asked to assess the Montreal Expos, then the Milwaukee

Brewers, then the NFL’s AFC Central.

But she grew anxious when she sensed Jaffe was inching toward hockey.

Then, talk about serendipity: “He asked about the Vezina Trophy and the

only reason I knew that was because a guy in high school kept saying he

was going to win the Vezina,” Suzuki told the USA Today in 1996.

Suzuki said she’s definitely in the minority as a woman at ESPN and is

“always challenged by that.”