Dawn Davenport
Her schedule takes her along all the outposts that dot the road signs in SEC Country.
There isn’t a sideline one in college football’s preeminent conference that Dawn Davenport hasn’t patrolled, from late-summer’s sweltering, blanket-dripping humid nights to its early tastes of winter’s bitter colds.
As one of the top sideline reporters on the SEC Network, Davenport routinely has a view to the games that define the sport topped only by those of athletes and officials on the actual field.
Her passion for her job resonates in her reporting.
It’s equally present when she’s filling various broadcasting roles for myriad TSSAA State Championships. Basketball, football, volleyball; Davenport’s got a call for them all.
She’s also the February honoree for the prestigious TSSAA Distinguished Service Award for her selfless contributions to high school athletics in the Volunteer State.
“Obviously, being a former athlete myself, it shaped me and my high school days shaped me, my coaches and those experiences,” said Davenport, co-host on Nashville’s top-ranked 3HL on 104.5 FM. “Since I graduated college, working in local sports, high school sports, was a big part of covering local sports, and I just fell in love with it because of the innocence of it and the passion there for it in the communities.
“There’s a selflessness of coaches, of families, teachers, of everybody that wants to help develop young people into great human beings. I just think it’s super important, and even when I got out of local TV, I wanted to stay involved and support it and make sure it’s still a big deal.”
Though she sounds like a former coach comfortable in the transition to broadcasting, Davenport instead is a multimedia pro who’s foundational knowledge is rooted in her own experiences.
Volleyball was her childhood dream, deep in the heart of Texas, and one she further accentuated in high school just outside of Atlanta in Peachtree City.
“I was born in Texas, where volleyball is queen, and I started playing early,” Davenport, married with a 4-year-old daughter and 13-year-old stepson, said. “When we moved to Peachtree City, they did not have a middle school volleyball team so I was allowed to play on the high school’s junior varsity team as an eighth-grader. The bus would actually come pick me up from middle school so that I could go play JV high school volleyball.
“I played basketball, softball, freshman year, ran track and field. I tried to do every single sport there was. It’s a big part of my life, my family are big sports people; my dad graduated from Duke, so we grew up watching Duke hoops and my mom had been a cheerleader at Miami before graduating from Georgia. Our schedules always revolved around our high school games and sports.”
Contests are still the name of the game in the Davenport household, and while those ESPN/SEC Network assignments might provide the most notoriety, Davenport finds relentless joy in chronicling the high school memories.
“Matt Gillespie gave me my first chance to do play by play for football, too, for (BlueCross Bowl) State Championships,” Davenport, who turned her own childhood volleyball dream into a scholarship-earning career at Auburn -- the “best place in the world -- said. “The state championships in any sport are my absolute favorites, the stories and adversities. To ask a coach the turning point in a season or when a coach knew a team was special, hearing about kids, their journeys, all they’ve overcome. It’s honestly my favorite conversations I have all year, talking to coaches about their players.
“It’s hard to win a championship in anything. So, the high school moments, I never won a state championship in my career, to be a part of chronicling such a big moment in what always will be a big moment is just very special.”
TSSAA proudly salutes Dawn Davenport for her contributions to high school athletics in Tennessee.
