Long before Valley Ranch, Kristi Scales remembers how she and her best friend used to hang from the practice fence to get a glance at their hometown heroes, the Dallas Cowboys.
“We’d just go right down the road from Forest Meadow Junior High and head to the field,” says Scales, 25. “It’s embarrassing now, but I remember when we would dig through their Dumpster for memorabilia. I found Larry Bethea’s right shoe once and was real jealous when my friend found Drew Pearson’s sweaty practice towel.”
How times change.
Who would have thought that a decade later, the former point guard at Lake Highlands High School (class of 1985) would produce the Cowboys games for KVIL and the Cowboys state-wide radio network?
Certainly not Scales, who was interviewing for a job in the Richardson Independent School District in 1989 after graduation from Texas A&M, when she interviewed at the station.
“I had never even been inside a radio station before, much less given any thought to working at one,” she says, smiling about her good fortune. “I went into the interview hoping to get an intern position or maybe a part-time opportunity in production or special events. The next day, the station offered me a promotions assistant position, and I thought, ‘Why not?’”
Scales has always enjoyed sports, playing varsity basketball for the Wildcats for three seasons. So when KVIL stunned the local radio community by outbidding all suitors for the right to broadcast the Cowboys games two seasons ago, she eagerly accepted the new position of sports producer.
And as the Cowboys went from also-ran to Super Bowl champion during the next two years, Scales has prospered, too. She won a prestigious Katie from the Press Club of Dallas for the station’s Cowboys coverage.
“Putting together ‘Game Day’ is challenging, to say the least,” Scales says. “The show itself can last up to eight hours, and any little problem that you have is noticed by hundreds of thousands of people.”
Such as the time a blimp flying over Texas Stadium wreaked havoc with the broadcast, or the time someone accidentally pulled the wrong plug in Phoenix and the game announcers went off the air for three minutes. “We had to broadcast from our station, which was interesting to say the least,” Scales says.
During her four years at the station, Scales has fond memories. She has traveled to Germany, New Zealand, Paris, London, and has interviewed such diverse personalities as Oliver North and James Taylor for the Sunday morning talk show.
But it’s not all glitz and glamour. Scales works as many as 70 hours a week during the NFL season, which begins with training camp this month and ends in February. The seven-day schedule leaves little room for working out and keeping in touch with friends. “That’s a personal choice and it comes with the territory,” she says.
But Scales wouldn’t have it any other way, “I love my job,” she says. “I work with the best people in the business and it’s something new and exciting every day. What more can I ask?”
