Raptors 905 voice Meghan McPeak chasing her dream – and history – play by play
As the first woman in Canadian sports broadcasting history to serve as radio announcer for a pro men’s team, Meghan McPeak draws on her own experience as a college basketball player and some sage advice.
“You like to talk and you don’t know how to shut up when it comes to sports,” McPeak recalls Humber College athletic director Doug Fox telling her back when she was weighing a career in radio vs. interior design nearly a decade ago.
The rest, as they say, is history. Suzyn Waldman and Sherry Ross are among the few to have done play-by-play in, respectively, baseball and hockey. But no Canadian-based female reached that level – until this past Nov. 19th, as the Raptors 905 tipped off its inaugural season with McPeak courtside calling the action for the team's broadcast.
Sportscasters are not supposed to be the star of the show, and that’s the way McPeak likes it. She’s not one to brag, and considers herself fortunate to stay involved with the game she loves. Although McPeak was a top point guard during her rookie year at Fanshawe College and her three seasons at Humber in Toronto (she was named MVP in 2007), she realized she wasn’t going to realistically play professionally in the WNBA or overseas. Broadcasting was her calling.
Shortly after her time at Humber, McPeak had the good fortune of landing an opportunity to do colour commentary on men’s and women’s hoops via McMaster’s University’s radio station CFMU. She honed her skills and continued to maintain relationships with others in the industry including Toronto Raptors radio announcer Paul Jones and Blue Jays broadcaster Jerry Howarth. After McMaster’s regular play-by-play voice “Doctor” Don Dawson suddenly passed away, McPeak took over.
“An unfortunate turn of events for Doctor Don and his family turned out to be fortunate for my career because they needed a replacement,” she remembers. “So they asked me to do it. I watched a couple of college games and NBA games to see how play-by-play announcers do it.”
Just like that, McPeak found herself with a unique opportunity to call the action as the voice of a team, rather than analyzing it as a colour commentator the way most former players would do. Little did she know the move would pay off with a gig in the NBA’s development league just seven years into her broadcasting career.
She got the job in large part due to MLSE’s Director Of Business Development Aaron LaFontaine and his staff, who had followed McPeak’s previous work and even featured her on the Raptors’ postgame show as a guest analyst. LaFontaine and company were aware of her potential, and felt above anyone else that might be interested in the open position, McPeak was deserving of the opportunity, ahead of a slew of others from all walks of life who hoped to be the new voice of Raptors 905.
“She was an emerging voice,” said LaFontaine. “If you look at the D-League as a whole, the idea is not only to develop players but also officials and team personnel and Meghan was somebody that was on the rise in terms of her skills, and it just seemed to be a really good fit.”
McPeak’s progress speaks not only to how far the involvement of women in pro sports has come but also to the push and pull in the media industry.
“A lot of women want to get into sports but they just don’t have the avenue, the access or the ability to do it because it is such a male-dominated world. Then you have the flip side of it, that because it is such a male-dominated world, it is hard for the male fan base to accept the fact that women actually know what we’re talking about when it comes to sports. A lot of men would rather just have women on the sidelines, give an update, be a talking head and just stay on the sidelines as a pretty face to look at.”
Ask her a few questions about how Raptors 905 is going to help the development of the organization’s up and coming players like Bruno Caboclo, Lucas Nogueira and Delon Wright, and McPeak can give you the breakdown. And unlike some players in the D-League who may never make it to the NBA, the fact the 905’s first ever play-by-play voice has already connected McPeak to some of the most recognized and accomplished female sportscasters south of the border, including the NCAA’s Beth Mowins, the WNBA’s LaChina Robinson and the Charlotte Hornets’ Stephanie Ready, suggests she too will be in the big leagues someday. With her growing Rolodex of mentors and role models in the game, and her passion and gift for basketball evident, it’s only a matter of time before McPeak makes the jump to the big stage.
For now, she’ll continue to work on her skills while calling the action for Raptors 905 home games at Mississauga’s Hershey Centre, carrying on with the same professional approach that got her there in the first place.
