Q: Tell me about Sports Stories with Denny Lennon?
A: Looking at the show from the outside in, I think the continued improvement to moving it forward, from the guests, to cinematography, the sound – so many things have improved from the very start till now, including the scope. At first Denny wanted to podcast so we did that once a week. Then COVID happened and we moved to live shows and it grew and expanded. There was a continued thirst for improvement. Denny comes from a team mentality so he’s really good at getting the best out of any team, and staying out of the way for that to happen. Knowing what you know and what you don’t know is one of Denny’s strengths as far as putting a team together for success. Where he’s best at interviewing is his ability to connect with people right way. It’s innate in him and he puts his guests at ease. People want to open up to him and it makes interviews more compelling, more personal and better to listen to in general. Denny’s ability to create his team and to be able to discuss and share his vision goes back to him as a coach, and part of his management style. Whether male or female, he can quickly see what each person brings to the team.
Q: You were a college athlete as a volleyball player and a Title IX recipient who played at the Division 1 level.
A: I was able to live a dream in college. To be able to play a sport and get my education paid for was so special for me. I went to New Mexico State and before that I played club volleyball at South Bay. We won a national championship my senior year so I got offers to D1, D2 and D3 schools, and also some walk on offers. The championship was on Prime Ticket and that was a big deal because women’s sports just weren’t shown on cable in those days. So it was a huge deal and all of a sudden 5 D1 coaches are in my face asking me why I’m wasn’t signed yet and offering me to come and visit with them and sign right away. That was in June and the season starts in August. I met with three schools and decided on New Mexico State. The coach was new and taking on the program and she liked the player I was and the person I was. Having a female at the coach was unique because most coaches were men. If we hadn’t been on TV I was planning on Golden West Community College because, unlike a lot of the players on my team, I didn’t have any D1 offers – but I knew I was good enough and was holding out for a D1 school. I figured I’d play in junior college until I got to where I wanted to go.
Q: Denny has been very instrumental in the growth of volleyball. What is it about the sport?
A: I think the magic of volleyball is there’s so many skills involved so as much as you think you only need to know one thing, you need to know about something for every time the ball moves. It’s like a choreographed dance you have to learn based on how the ball is moving at that particular moment and where the ball goes. You have to do so many things – below your waist, above your head, contacting with the ball at a high level, you’re jumping and blocking. The front row and the back row are all choreographed. The true magic I think is team sports. Everyone has a singular job to do for a team purpose. Growing up in Venice, CA I played a lot of beach volleyball. Then it was considered the same sport, now beach and indoor volleyball are two different sports. When you were in season you couldn’t play beach at the same time in high school and college sports. Now it’s different but I played both all the time then, including coed. With beach volleyball you have to do everything – you have to have ball control, play defense, block and hit. Indoor requires a lot of skills but it’s more position specific.
Q: Denny really knows how to present and speak to his guests a key ingredient in Sports Stories with Denny Lennon.
A: The connection I feel toward the guests Denny brings on the show is about the athletic connection understanding. There are certain things you understand as an athlete that transcends sports. If I remember correctly, I think Jerry West spoke about the moment time slowed down and he still felt like he was in normal motion. That clicked with me and to have that experience, you feel like a super hero. I think even someone who’s not an athlete knows that feeling – whether it be the birth of a baby, or even a funeral – when something was deeply touching and moving. Those stories make sense whether you’re an athlete or not. I think I was lucky to have been born at the right time in America and we stand on the shoulders of others who did the hard work without the legislation that we have now. They did the work to allow women’s’ voices on television and in women’s sports. That allowed the next generation more opportunities. I feel very lucky to be a beneficiary of Title IX. In a span of about 5-10 years of my birth all of this happened that provided the opportunities I had, I might not have been able to go to college at all without everything that happened at the right time. Being on the set of Sports Stories I’ve had the chance to see the guests come through. Jerry West was one of my favorites because he has this presence about him. There’s this calm about him. Denny thoroughly did the research and managed to get some of the best sound clips and information I’ve heard.
Q: Who have been some of your favorite guests?
A: I also really liked Bobby Klein and the whole legacy of the Kleins. The way Denny worked at getting him on the show – going through his grandson, and father and mother. It was so interesting from a Catholic connection as well as Palisades connection. Playing on the 1972 USC football team and then a professional career with the San Diego Chargers and Los Angeles Rams. And his efforts now in fund-raising. Chris McGee is by far one of the best interviews. He is a co-host on the Lakers’ TV broadcast pre- and post-game shows. He so confident and poised and ready for the interview. You have to be so on your toes to interview him and Denny stepped up to that. That was a fun interview to be a part of. One of the first things I knew about Chris was that his daughter had played on our AAU beach tour. He was announcing a game and getting updates about his daughter’s game. He was also a non-starting player, playing as a captain at CSUN so that shows how much his team respected him. He’s highly competitive and a supportive father so he was getting text updates on his daughter’s game while announcing. 20, 30, 40 years ago you wouldn’t see volleyball personalities being booked on shows. You barely saw games on television then. In my lifetime that’s changed so much with Olympic Volleyball and so many personalities coming out of that. It was so cool and inspiring to see that come about. But you never saw that star person being interview or recognized before that.
Corporate sponsorship – The 80s, 90s and early 2000s you saw beach volleyball grow leaps and bounds. It’s in the Olympics every four years and you’ve seen Misty May and Kerry Walsh. There wasn’t much stuff made for the beach and it was hard to find sponsors then. Even bathing suits weren’t made for that kind of movement. While there were sponsors, they didn’t always fit the heart of beach volleyball. When that fits perfectly together it makes the sport grow and get better because there’s an identifier. Anywhere in CA you can walk into a surf shop and the right clothes and equipment fill the store. It’s all produced for that specific activity. That wasn’t even close to a seamless integration for beach volleyball. One thing that makes the podcasts and live show really interesting is that Denny can bring history, which teaches and entertains the audience. It can go back to greats in the game so there’s great history. One of my favorite interviews was Karch Kiraly which brought history of the world as well as beach volleyball. I think even people who knew Karch his whole life didn’t know that history.
Growing up I didn’t have female role models to look up to. It was difficult. When I first started at New Mexico State we travelled to Long Beach State and my whole family was there. My first game had Danielle Scott who is now a five time Olympian. I remember being awe struck. Today kids have female athletes but then I had male athletes on my wall, of all sports.
Three of my favorite recent shows are JuJu Watkins, an absolute fun loving, wonderful person. She’s a basketball wizard and a good person. That’s been the fun of the show as we learn about people as people first and athletes second. Also Ella Parker is a wonderful person and athlete. She’s a softball pitcher and she happens to be Dave Roberts’ niece. She throws heat and hits a ball. The Ferrari twins – Angela and Bella are fantastic, the funniest interviews. They are Beach Volleyball National Champions from a Cinderella team but they picked up every ball, they were so fast and respectful of the sport.
There’s still a novelty toward seeing womens’ professional sports on television. I think it has an audience for it. When I won the National Championship in high school we were one of the only teams still wearing bun huggers. They called them buns and they were basically bathing suit bottoms but you wore them indoors. You had a regular jersey shirt and those. Now they wear biker shorts. In that one year after the uniform changed from buns to biker shorts, attendance dropped 15%! So part of that was people wanting to watch women in small bottoms. You get taken in by the athleticism, but the little bottoms were a lure. There are different governing bodies that dictate what the players can wear.
Q: Things have really evolved as far as the continuing shows and existing catalogue.
A: The angles on the stories is part of what makes the show unique. It’s not always about a singular moment but about the evolution. It’s fun to follow that in a person’s life and career. When Kirk Gibson hit the homerun for the Dodgers, you remember where you were. Denny is great at telling the story that lead to that and that’s what makes it interesting -- and I know there’s a bigger audience for this.
Q: Your staff photographer is Cienna Lennon.
A: Our staff photographer, from Cienna Lennon Photography, has a fantastic perspective. I always look forward to seeing the shots she takes on the set. She’s often called our ninja and finds the right shots. I think that comes from being an athlete, she just does what needs to get done. As a high school athlete she was the Senior Athlete of the Year at the Archer School for Girls and I think that allowed her to integrate on the set and have the perspective that shows her range.
Q: Tell me about amateur athletics and the involvement of Denny and yourself in the Sullivan Awards.
A: I produced the 90th Annual Sullivan Awards, one of the first virtual award shows during COVID. It had great success and we were just figuring it all out as we went in the new virtual reality we were in. The Sullivan Awards are given to the best amateur athletes in the nation based on committee, popular and press votes, by the AAU committee.Since we’ve been involved with the AAU Sullivan Awards, some of the winners have been Ezekiel Elliot, a football player from Ohio State, Catherine Plummer, volleyball player from Stanford, and the most recent winner Sabrina Ionescu, a basketball player from Oregon, and Spencer Lee, a wrestler from Iowa. The charm of those athletes who are still considered amateurs from Sports Stores, and especially through the Sullivan Awards, was really interesting to see. We were trying to figure out how to produce the show when COVID was new and we were huddled at home. We were given a week and were receiving the backdrop in the mail and trying to figure out how to set that up. Then we had to connect with the athletes. There were 10 or so athletes we had to connect ahead of time, sometimes through their agents. What was different is that a virtual show required them to be responsible for the connectivity issues on their end. We couldn’t be there to set it up for them. We had to do test checks so there were naturally issues with that. Constant vigilance and trying to make things work in the moment because you’re live. There was a lot of problem solving and being flexible in the moment. And if the audio is bad, that kills an interview.
I also teach school so technology is second nature to me now because it had to be. Reinventing what you do through technology is super important so that’s what we’ve done with this. The school is specifically designed for language disorders so the students who go there often have challenges in how they process things. My undergrad degree is in economics and my higher level degree is in education.
One of the things I bring to Sports Stories is an athletic background, both playing and coaching. I’ve coached both boys and girls teams I think that’s an important perspective especially having gone to an all-girls high school. But you have to be able to produce in a world where men and women are equal and their voices are heard. Coaching is a little different for boys and girls and I think Denny put it perfectly. With boys you tell them how you’re going to make them a star, how you’re going to make them win, and how to get the girl. They just want to know how they are going to look good. Girls, they usually want to do it for the benefit of others on the team. If you tell them what the team needs from then, that’s what they do.
One of the things we do at Sports Stories is to bring on not just the athlete but the coach, the journalist or doctor that supports the whole world. Dr Mandelbaum was one of those people who was instrumental and gave us perspective about COVID, performance and greatness. One of my favorite parts was when he got totally off the medical topic and talked about Shark Week. He’s fascinated with sharks and that really humanized him.
I think more so today than ever before, we need sports. I think that’s because our nation is so divided and when sports went away during COVID we had nothing to root for. The joy of competition and something we could be together on was gone. We were so divided. But with sports everyone can relate and be together.
