Tag Archives: Kyle Martino

Rebecca Lowe Gets The Olympic Call

Posted on December 2, 2013 | 5 comments

Rebecca Lowe has earned plenty of praise for her studio work with NBC Sports’ English Premier League soccer broadcasts.

Rebecca Lowe

Rebecca Lowe

Her fast-rising career now takes another step forward. She’s just been named live weekday and weekend host of the network’s Winter Olympics coverage.

What makes this “06880”-worthy is that when she heads to Sochi in February, it will be from Westport. The British-born sportscaster and her husband — former English professional soccer player and coach Paul Buckle — moved near downtown last spring.

Lowe told Sports Illustrated she was “floored” to be chosen for Russia.

I wasn’t expecting it. It is very easy to pigeonhole people and I think being a female back in the UK, I was pigeonholed as one of the females who does football (soccer) only. It’s very difficult to show people that you can actually do other things …. I’d like the opportunity to say maybe I’m not just all about soccer, even as much as I love the sport. Fingers crossed, I’m hoping I can show that.

SI’s Richard Deitsch notes, “Last year she became the first woman to front the FA Cup Final for a U.K audience. She has been remarkably good in her first three months on air in the States.”

Lowe told SI:

I come in with an open brain and an appetite to learn. My head will be in the books and I am not somebody who does something in life not fully prepared. My Dad [Chris Lowe, a longtime BBC presenter] always said you can never over-prepare enough. I will let this become my world.

Speaking of her father: He visited Lowe this fall. Together, they attended a Staples High School soccer match.

Call it a busman’s and buswoman’s holiday.

Two Westporters in the NBC Sports soccer studio. Rebecca Lowe is joined by Staples Class of 1999 graduate -- and former US national team player -- Kyle Martino.

Two Westporters in the NBC Sports soccer studio. Rebecca Lowe is joined by Staples Class of 1999 graduate — and former US national team player — Kyle Martino.

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Martin Montana: Finance Is No Laughing Matter

Posted on October 4, 2013 | Comments Off on Martin Montana: Finance Is No Laughing Matter

It’s mixing metaphors, but NBC Sports’ telecasts of England’s Premier League soccer is a home run.

Helping raise ratings are a host of Westporters. Jeff Clachko is in marketing. Mike Carey provides real-time research. Rebecca Lowe is an on-air personality. Former US national team player Kyle Martino is a studio analyst.

Covering all bases, even one of the ads has a Westport twist. Martin Montana does the voiceover for MotoX. He not only graduated from Staples in 1997; he was friendly with Martino when both attended the University of Virginia.

But this is not a story about the Westport/EPL connection. It’s about how Montana made his way from the Staples High School basketball program, to the world of finance, then into comedy, acting and voiceovers. All in the space of 15 years.

Martin Montana

Martin Montana

At Staples, Martin captained the basketball team. He’d been a stand-up fan since the 1st days of Comedy Central, and had always been “the funny dude” in school — but was too shy to actually perform.

At UVa, Martin broke out of his shell. He took acting classes, kept notebooks of interesting jokes and did short sketches. Still, he never took the stage.

After graduation, he had student loans. So he moved to Boston, for a “regular job” in finance. At 25, he ran his company’s San Diego office.

“Things happened fast,” Martin recalls. “I made money. Life was good.”

But he felt unfulfilled. In 2006, “I realized I was at a fork. I could stay in the financial world, and cruise to the finish line when I was 55 years old. Or I was still young enough to start over.”

The next year he quit his job, and moved back to Boston. His friends wondered why he’d left such a sweet gig.

“I got it,” Martin says. “What I did was not real logical.”

But it was what he wanted. He worked harder than ever. His 1st comedy gig was at a bowling alley.

Soon, though, he was performing 4 or 5 times a week, at downtown clubs.He went from opening shows to hosting, then headlining.

Three years ago, he moved to New York. His career took off. Martin has worked at top clubs, and been a semifinalist in the city’s Funniest Stand-Up competition. He does colleges and corporate gigs, and appeared on Sirius XM. He’s getting ad work too, like the MotoX voiceover.

His style is “myself,” Martin says. “I’m not a political, heavy guy.” Favorite topics include his parents, dating and sports.

As funny as comedy is, it’s deadly serious. “My job is to make people laugh, from the minute I get the mic,” Martin notes. “The feedback is live. There’s no place to hide.” He thrives on the challenge, and the immediacy of what he does.

“The crowd can be great, lots of energy, or there can be 17 people in the audience,” he says. “It’s totally raw. Whatever it is, you have to give it your best.”

Back in his Staples basketball days, Martin might have wanted to play at Madison Square Garden. Now he’d love to perform comedy there.

Funny. Life changes like that.

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Kyle Martino’s Cupcake Wars

Posted on January 14, 2012 | 3 comments

Kyle Martino is everywhere.

Kyle Martino and Eva Amurri. (Photo: Jeff Vespa/Wire Images via ESPN Page 2)

The 1999 Staples graduate’s October wedding to actress Eva Amurri —  Susan Sarandon’s daughter — was covered by People Magazine (in a story written by, of all people, Kyle’s classmate Jen Garcia).

Last week, as an ESPN2 analyst covering the Major League Soccer college draft, the former national team player gave a shout-out to Staples soccer. He told a national TV audience how much he enjoyed the camaraderie with his teammates, and hearing the cheers of the large crowds on the Loeffler Field hill.

In between, Kyle served as a cupcake judge.

Last Sunday, the Food Network featured him in an episode of Cupcake Wars. (Never seen the show? Each week 4 of the country’s top bakers face off in  elimination challenges. The sweet prize: $10,000, and the opportunity to showcase their cupcakes at the winning gig.)

In Kyle’s episode, the winner took cupcakes to the Major League Soccer championship game in Los Angeles.

Kyle — one of the league’s most popular players during his career with the Columbus Crew and LA Galaxy (where his teammate was the even more popular David Beckham) — told ESPN Page 2:

I probably ate 5 entire cupcakes. Each cupcake was like a 3-course meal. Hey, if I had stayed off sweets, I probably would still be playing soccer.

I was blessed with a good metabolism. Younger, I was running 8 miles a day and still able to eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. But that was then. These days, I might be the only ex-professional athlete who gets winded going up the stairs.

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Waving Flag

Posted on June 11, 2010 | 14 comments

Westporters live in a bubble.  Whether by choice or circumstance, our lives are disconnected from the overwhelming majority of people on the planet.

We don’t know how they live, or what they think.  Their concerns have nothing to do with ours.

Starting tomorrow — and continuing for the next 30 days — Westport has a golden opportunity to join the world.

The World Cup kicks off this morning in South Africa — the 1st time the global event has ever been held on that continent.  Whether you love soccer, hate it, or never think about it, you should join the magic.

For a month, the eyes of the world will focus on a country that less than 2 decades ago was banned from international sports competition.  Uruguyans, Koreans, Serbians, Cameroonians — fans of the 32 nations lucky enough to be competing for the trophy — will watch game after game, cheering and agonizing and laughing and crying as the long tournament (think March Madness on steroids) unfolds.

Fans of the nearly 200 nations that did not qualify (fun fact:  more countries try to win the World Cup than are members of the U.N.) will be equally transfixed.

Tomorrow afternoon in Westport, hundreds of soccer fans will jam the Staples auditorium to watch the US take on England — something that has not happened in 60 years.  (Fun fact:  In 1950 we pulled off one of the biggest upsets in World Cup history, beating the Brits 1-0.)

Win or lose — and a win, though unlikely, is possible — the excitement will build.  Our next opponents are Slovenia and Algeria.  Though minnows in global politics, they have the potential to derail our soccer team.  In Brazilian favelas, Dutch head shops and Ivory Coast villages, people will talk about our games.

And in Westport, we’ll talk about theirs.

In 2002, people I barely knew stopped me on the street to ask how I thought our team would do.  (Poorly, I said.  Unfortunately, I was right.)

In 2006, hundreds of Staples students — athletes in all sports, musicians, debaters — gathered around TVs in the cafeteria and hallways to watch.  They knew the US players — and those on Argentina, France and Italy.  Some even followed countries like Angola and Japan.

Westport's Kyle Martino will announce World Cup games on ESPN radio, with occasional forays into the television booth.

Interest in the World Cup is at an all-time American high — and for once, Westport is not bucking a national trend.  (An added bonus:  ESPN radio and occasional TV analyst Kyle Martino is a Staples graduate, a former professional and national team player — and a good friend of David Beckham.)

I said it before:  Whether you love soccer, hate it or never think about it, give this World Cup a chance.

Watch this morning’s opening match (10 a.m., ESPN, South Africa vs. Mexico).  Thrill to see 91-year-old Nelson Mandela in the stands, fulfilling a lifelong dream.

Listen to the joyful vuvuzelas — South Africa’s horn that will blare joyfully at every match.

And — if you’re still on the fence — click here to watch the most spine-tingling video you’ll ever see.  If K’naan’s “Waving Flag” doesn’t make you want to leave your Westport bubble and join the world in watching The Beautiful Game, you may not be human after all.

(Click on the Westport Soccer Association website for registration information on tomorrow’s USA-England telecast at Staples.  Click here for an amazing interactive calendar that tells you all you need to know about the entire World Cup tournament.)

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Kyle Martino Heads To The World Cup

Posted on April 20, 2010 | 1 comment

Kyle Martino — the Westport soccer star who was National High School Player of the Year in 1998, earned MLS Rookie of the Year honors, and shared the Los Angeles Galaxy field with David Beckham — is going to the World Cup.

Kyle Martino

He won’t be playing for the US national team — though he’s done that in the past.  For a  month starting in mid-June, Martino will be a key part of ESPN and ABC’s radio crew.  He’ll announce games with TV veterans J.P. Dellacamera and Tommy Smyth, and former New York Cosmos star Shep Messing.

Martino has earned praise for his ESPN television work, covering the US men’s team and MLS.  However, for the World Cup, Disney — ESPN and ABC’s parent company — has signed a largely British TV crew.

That will be particularly interesting on June 12.  It’s the Americans’ 1st game of the tournament — against England.

Don’t want to hear a Brit call the match?  No problem.

Gather in front of a huge hi-def screen.  Mute the sound.

And listen to Kyle Martino, live from South Africa.

Game time is 2:30 p.m.

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Kyle Martino Tackles Something New

Posted on January 26, 2010 | 2 comments

Kyle Martino is not yet 30 years old, but he’s already had a lifetime of success.

The Gatorade National Player of the Year at Staples in 1998, he starred at the University of Virginia; was named Major League Soccer Rookie of the Year in 2002; played on the US national team; was David Beckham’s teammate on the Los Angeles Galaxy, and is now one of ESPN’s top soccer announcers — with a shot at calling World Cup matches this summer.

At the same time, he’s forging a career in finance.

Kyle Martino (Photo courtesy of Fairfield County Business Journal)

Martino’s storied careers — on the soccer pitch and on Wall Street — are the subject of a front-page story in the current issue of Fairfield County Business Journal.  Writer Ryan Doran notes that while playing for the Columbus Crew and Galaxy, Martino prepared for life after pro sports by taking classes at Ohio State and UCLA.

He arranged an off-season internship at Lenox Advisors, a wealth advisory firm.  He was mentored by Tom Henske — a Lenox partner who in the 1990s won 3 national championships as the University of Virginia’s goalkeeper.  (In a you-can’t-make-this-up coincidence, Henske now serves as Staples’ goalie coach.)

“The reality of knowing that there is a next chapter after, for a kid who sees his name in neon lights, is that you have to figure things out very quickly after hanging the cleats up,” says Martino.  He figured things out long before his career ended.

Martino hopes to develop a specialty helping athletes manage their money.

He’s kept his ties to the Staples boys soccer program, assisting with training and offering inspirational talks whenever he can.  He’s a great role model for teenagers — whether they want to be professional soccer player, sports broadcaster or financial advisor.

Or all 3.

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