Between the Milwaukee Bucks’ final regular season game on April 13 and their playoff opener on April 19, the team’s play-by-play broadcaster, Lisa Byington, made a stop at Sensenbrenner Hall.
On April 15, Byington gave the 27th annual Axthelm Memorial Lecture, a College of Communication honor as part of the Pete and Bonnie Axthelm Memorial Program.
Byington has worked as a sideline reporter and play-by-play voice for an assortment of networks, including FOX Sports, CBS and ESPN, in addition to being the first woman to call play-by-play for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 2021. The latest chapter of Byington’s story has included her four seasons with the Milwaukee Bucks, becoming the first female play-by-play broadcaster for a major men’s professional sports team when she was hired by the Bucks in 2021.
“It is an absolute honor to be here today,” Byington said.
The lecture focused on Byington’s experience growing up as a woman in sports, taking those in attendance along her journey from middle school basketball to the headset.
Among those mentioned in the lecture was Byington’s mother, Linda. Showing photos from her high school yearbook in the slide deck, Byington shared how few opportunities her mother had to pursue sports growing up.
Similarly, Byington’s young life was spent watching men’s sporting events, while listening to male play-by-play broadcasters on the call.
“Part of following a dream is seeing yourself doing something, envisioning yourself, the hope of getting to that moment,” Byington said. “We watched sports, but they were just the guys playing. So, you never envisioned yourself doing that because you never saw it.”
Along the journey, from middle school sports to being a two-sport athlete at Northwestern University to working for a small news station in northern Michigan, Byington shared her commitment to creating her own path, which enabled her to help pave the way for women in the future to feel like they belong in sports.
Byington was chosen to give the lecture as a professional in the sports journalism field, as the annual event is hosted to honor the legacy of Pete and Bonnie Axthelm, who worked in sports journalism and business respectively.
“Pete and Bonnie Axthelm were remarkable individuals and trailblazers in their respective fields,” Kati Berg, acting dean of the College of Communication, said. “Marquette University, and particularly the Diederich College of Communication, have been blessed over the years to hold the Axthelm Lecture here on campus. We are forever grateful to the generosity of Nancy Axthelm and the Axthelm Charitable Foundation, because we have been able to award numerous students the Axthelm Award over the years.”
The Axthelm Memorial Award, given annually to outstanding journalism students at Marquette with a desire to pursue sports journalism, was given to two honorees in 2025. Matt Baltz, a junior in the College of Communication, and Mia Thurow, a sophomore in the College of Communication, received the award, and with it, the opportunity to introduce Byington to the audience.
“While Lisa’s long list of accolades speaks for itself, her impact goes far beyond just firsts and broken records. She represents everything the Pete and Bonnie Axthelm Memorial scholarship honors,” Thurow said. “She hasn’t just broken barriers. She’s redefined what’s possible.
In attendance were Marquette students, faculty and community members, including the finalists for the 2025 Axthelm Award.
In this most recent season for the Bucks, Byington had the opportunity to design a hat for the team, in which her commitment to advancing women in sports was shared in the words “background noise” written on the inside. Sharing that women in play-by-play roles tend to grab attention, Byington expressed her ultimate goal for female voices to be just as normalized as men’s on broadcasts.
“My dream is that a female voice on a men’s game becomes so normal, it’s background noise,” Byington said.
That voice over the game has also made Byington a subject of online criticism, as some social media commenters have opposed her calling men’s sporting events. Sharing some of those posts and how she has taken them in stride, Byington illustrated some of the barriers along the road ahead.
Also sprinkled into her story were direct words of motivation to those listening, encouraging the audience to tackle obstacles just as she did.
“Where do we go from here?” Byington asked. “I ask myself that, because there’s always new mountains to climb [and] there’s always new challenges to be had. I share my story knowing that everybody has a challenge. For me, it was overcoming some gender stereotypes. For you guys, for some of the men in this room, it might be stepping into a world that you’ve never done before.”
After the lecture and Q&A session that followed, those in attendance had the opportunity to meet with Byington and take photos.
“I think the most important thing is to define your own path,” Byington said. “It’s belief in what you can do.”
This story was written by Lance Schulteis. He can be reached at lance.schulteis@marquette.edu.
This story includes quotes from paid members of the Marquette Wire staff. These staff members were not interviewed directly, but rather were main speakers at the event. Therefore, the reporter found these perspectives important to include in the story.
