Sports Pioneer to Receive President’s Award at Gold Key Dinner

A pioneer in Connecticut women’s sports, both on and off the field, will be honored with the President’s Award from the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance at the prestigious Gold Key Dinner.

Leah Secondo, a 1980 graduate of Enrico Fermi High School in Enfield, was selected for the award based on her numerous groundbreaking accomplishments, first as an athlete, then in the field of sports media.

Secondo first made her mark in the previously-untapped world of girls ice hockey in the 1970s, as a member of a team called the Enfield Eagles, which won several championships in western Massachusetts leagues before disbanding. She went on to become a rare three-sport All-CCIL performer in field hockey, basketball and softball at Fermi.

She studied communication and journalism at Southern Connecticut State University, and upon graduation was hired by the late Bo Kolinsky to work at the Hartford Courant. She also began a broadcasting career in 1984 at WGGB-TV 40 in Springfield, Mass., becoming the first woman sportscaster hired at any western Massachusetts television station. In 1990, history repeated itself in Connecticut, when she became the state’s first female sportscaster at WTNH-TV 8 in New Haven.

When UConn women’s basketball exploded onto the national scene with its first undefeated national championship season in 1994-95, Secondo served as color analyst. Two years later, she again made history when she became the first woman to host an NBA pre- or post-game show for the Boston Celtics on Fox Sports New England, for which she was a finalist for a Boston/New England Emmy award.

Secondo moved to Florida in 2000, earning a Florida Associated Press Award in 2007 for “Football Friday Night,” and continues her 34-year broadcasting career with work all over the country. Recent high-profile assignments have included the NCAA field hockey championships and the ACC lacrosse championships.

She has been inducted into three Halls of Fame: the Enfield Athletic Hall of Fame in 1996, the New Agenda Northeast Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1997 and the Connecticut Field Hockey Hall of Fame in 2009.

Secondo will be honored at the 77th annual Gold Key Dinner at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington on Sunday, April 29, 2018. Gold Key Award recipients will be PGA golf professional Dennis Coscina, former Granby Memorial High School field hockey coach Dot Johnson, New Canaan High School football coach Lou Marinelli, newly-retired UConn women’s soccer coach Len Tsantiris and Olympic ice hockey gold medalist Gretchen Ulion Silverman.

Tickets to the Gold Key Dinner are $75 apiece, and may be reserved by contacting CSWA President Tim Jensen of Patch Media Corp. at tim.jensen@patch.com or 860-394-5091, or Vice President Rich Gregory of the Danbury News-Times at rgregory@newstimes.com or 203-705-8625.

Proceeds from the event benefit the Bo Kolinsky Journalism Scholarship, named after a longtime Hartford Courant sportswriter and past CSWA president who passed away unexpectedly in 2003.

Photo courtesy of CSWA