Reporter Lisa Salters embarked on her most high-profile assignment to date in 2012 when she was named to ESPN’s Monday Night Football team.
Just a few months removed from her first season on the NFL sidelines, she accepted an even more important role this spring: mother.
Salters always wanted to be a parent. She tried for years to have a child on her own but was unsuccessful.
Refusing to give up, she signed with an agency in the fall to begin the process of trying to adopt.
Salters expected it to be challenging, knowing she — as a single woman — would be considered alongside married couples as potential parents.
But in mid-February, she got the call she had been hoping for. A young woman had chosen Salters as a candidate to adopt her child.
Salters soon met the woman in person. They were comfortable with one another, and the decision was made.
A month later, Salters was on assignment in Dallas for a Wednesday night ESPN NBA game. Just before tipoff, she got the call that the woman was going into labor — two weeks early.
Salters worked the first half of the telecast before her producer let her go to the airport to catch a flight home. But, it was so late in the evening, she had to fly west first to Phoenix before taking a red-eye east to get there in time.
She made it.
Her son, Samuel, was born and she was there to see it. She and Samuel had a room in the hospital together that night, and a day later she officially took custody.
Six weeks into parenthood, Salters describes this time in her life as “the most content I’ve ever been.”
On Tuesday, she spent her first night away from Samuel to attend the Sports Emmy Awards in New York, where she was nominated for Outstanding Sports Reporter. While it wasn’t easy being away from him, she did enjoy her first night of uninterrupted sleep since he was born.
This weekend she will spend her first Mother’s Day as a mom by having a low-key brunch with Samuel and friends.
She will return to work in a few months in time for the MNF season and the next flight of E:60 newsmagazine shows, this time balancing two jobs: reporter and mom.
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