Lesley Visser

Lesley Candace Visser celebrates her birthday on the 11th of September and was born in Quincy, Massachusetts in the United States of America in 1953 as the daughter of an engineer and a school teacher. She was very enthusiastic when it came to sports every since she was a child.

She was determined about becoming a sportswriter when she was only 10 year old; meanwhile other kids of her age are usually busy with Disney princesses and racecars. For her early education, she was sent to the South Hadley High School and after graduating from school she pursued higher education by attending Boston College at Massachusetts. She graduated from college by earning a Bachelor’s degree in English.

Visser eventually tied the marital knot with Dick Stockton, a sportscaster for Fox and Turner Sports specializing on soccer and baseball, in 1983. The couple had met back in the 1975 World Series during the sixth game. Sadly, the marriage lasted only until 2010 after which Visser found another partner, Bob Kanuth, who is a former basketball captain at Harvard and a businessman, and married him in the July of 2011.

Since women didn’t work as a sportswriter during Visser’s time, she only got the opportunity to work her dream job at The Boston Globe after being awarded the Carnegie Foundation grant in 1974.

She worked there for fourteen whole years and during that time, she covered many major sports including Major League Baseball, college football, horse racing, NBA, college baseball, golf and tennis. She also had the opportunity to become the first NFL female beat writer after covering the New England Patriots.

Visser began working for CBS as well from 1983 and became a part of CBS sports in 1984. She was only working part-time then, but later joined to work full-time after 3 years in 1987. For CBS, she was assigned to cover major NBA games which included the NBA finals as well.

She also covered other major games which included MLB’s College World Series and World Series. She was also assigned on the Tennis U.S. Open from 1984 to 1993. Visser also reached the feat of becoming the first female to cover the World Series in 1990 and only two years later, in 1992, at the Super Bowl, she became the first woman to present the Trophy.

After departure from CBS, Visser joined ABC Sports and ESPN and went on to achieve another record of becoming the first female who reported during the Super Bowl from the Sidelines in 1995.

With ESPN, Visser got the chance to work on the coverage team for the Super Bowl, figure skating, horse racing and college basketball as well. She went back to CBS in the August of 2000 and was assigned on various big games along with other special tasks for CBS News.

She is also the first woman color analyst and has covered the Super Bowl XXXV, Super Bowl XXXVIII and Super Bowl XLI as well.

Being a big celebrity in the world of sports journalism, it’s quite surprising to hear that Visser does not possess any sort of social media accounts yet. Maybe she just likes to keep her life to herself. But hopefully, maybe her fans will get the chance to follow her on the internet in the near future.

In spite of not being part of social media, she is hugely admired by her followers.