Dana Boyle’s Life on Field and Screen

Dana Boyle/ Courtesy Photos

After the banners are tattered, the trophies are tarnished, the awards are dust-covered and the spotlight fades, character is what lasts.  

Character is the essence of ESPN and ACC Network sportscaster Dana Boyle. 

“She is the kind of kid you would want your child to be like,” Howard Sobolov, the retired Londonderry High School athletic director, said about Boyle, who was an outstanding scholar-athlete there, a leader among her peers and is enshrined in the school’s Hall of Fame.

Boyle, a three-time U.S. Lacrosse All-American in 2008-2010, led the Lancers to their first of three New Hampshire state Division 1 championships and was the captain when the girls’ team won two more, including back-to-back titles in 2009 and in the 2010 perfect 19-0 season.

Her prowess on the field and proficiency in the classroom earned her a full scholarship to the University of Virginia, which is renowned for rigorous academics and superior athletics while competing in the intensely competitive Division 1 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).

“She’s going to tell you how she feels and what she’s thinking even if it bothers you so we’re all going to get better. She’s going to share what’s on her mind,” says Julie Myers, who was the head coach of the national champion Virginia Cavaliers women’s lacrosse team for 28 years. 

Boyle, 34, is recognized as a relentlessly hard worker driven to excel. While pursuing her bachelor’s and master’s degrees and making the All-ACC Women’s Lacrosse Team and All-ACC Academic Team, she held down a position in the UVA Athletics Department. She also coached a girls’ team to the Virginia high school state championship and was named the Central Virginia Coach of the Year.

“I loved coaching them so much. That is one of my most cherished memories and always will be. I had no time. I was 24, 25, 26, 27 and made a lot of sacrifices, especially on the social side,” she says. “I was spending my weekends on a high school lacrosse field.”

Simultaneously she was positioning herself for a high-profile, successful sports broadcasting career.

“One day I was sitting at my desk in the athletics department, and I got a call from a guy in video services who asked if I would be interested in calling any lacrosse games,” she says. “I already had that full-time job, but I said yes because that’s what I do, even though I didn’t know how to do it then.”

At the outset it wasn’t glamorous, and it wasn’t lucrative.

Boyle gets the game story straight from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill head football coach Bill Belichick. Courtesy Photos

“I would be working my full-time job, which is a seven-days-a-week job and not a 40-hour-per-week job. I’d work 9 to 5 in the department and then work a basketball game at night, then get up very early in the morning on a Saturday to drive from Charlottesville (Virginia) to Chapel Hill (North Carolina) 3½ hours one-way to call a lacrosse game for $100.” She was spending more money than she was making. 

“You end up losing money after paying out of pocket for gas and food, printing out your own rosters and other expenses,” she says. “Then I’d drive the 3½ hours back and work a baseball game on Sunday for my real job, and then on Monday get up and do it all over again the next week.”

But when the opportunity came, Boyle was ready to take it.

“I showed up, but I was really terrible when I started. I just kept pushing through,” she says. “This was before the ACC Network launched with ESPN, so I did five or six games that year. The next year they launched, and Amy Rosenfeld (formerly with ESPN) just happened to be listening, and she recommended me. That’s how I got started.” 

Boyle joined ESPN in 2020 as an analyst and sideline reporter for collegiate and professional lacrosse. In 2024, she was also named the sideline reporter for Primetime Football on the ACC Network and her star keeps rising.

Her Virginia Cavaliers coach is among her biggest fans.

“She’s crushing it. I’m so proud of her,” Myers says. “Every time I see her on TV, I think that’s my Dana. My 18-year-old who came here from New Hampshire so green and with so much to learn, and she’s just putting it all out there. She’s doing a great job.”

Boyle’s colleagues at the network wholeheartedly agree. 

Boyle, a former All-ACC lacrosse player, interviews key players on the newly-crowned national champion University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill women’s lacrosse team.

“Her openness to help people is at the core of who she is. That translates to the broadcast world because the people who encounter her whether they are the players, the coaches, or her colleagues feel comfortable around her because she is such a wonderful person,” says Paul Carcaterra, who has been with ESPN since 2010 as a lacrosse and college football game analyst and sideline reporter. 

Boyle also has a knack for the profession, Carcaterra says.

“Dana is really finding her groove and her real voice as a sideline reporter. She understands the value of storytelling,” he says. “With that comes a little less analysis in terms of the breakdown of Xs and Os, but from the human perspective she really understands how to support the broadcast team and how to support the overall production.” 

Boyle is thankful to everyone who is an integral part of her journey, which is why she generously answers every text, DM and email she gets from aspiring sportscasters.

“I try to be a role model for people coming up in the business. I try to help because I had people help me and I think it’s important to pay it forward,” she says. “We’re all trying to get to where we want to be. I really believe we all have to help each other.”

Family Foundation 

Dana Boyle credits her family for guiding her toward success. So does her high school athletic director. 

“Dana comes from a great family,” says retired Londonderry High School athletic director Howard Sobolov. 

There will be no argument from her.

“My parents are such an important part of this journey,” she says admiringly of Angela and Mike Boyle. “Now that I’m older, I’m even more appreciative of the sacrifices they made for me. I never was told no when I said I wanted to do something. They said ‘yes, we’ll figure it out.’ My dad was a pilot in the military, so he traveled a lot and much of the time it was on my mom to get me to and from practice.” 

Her father was deployed to Kuwait when she was in high school and to Afghanistan when she was college, which put a lot of strain on her mother, Boyle says. “It was really difficult. My mom held down the fort. She kept business as usual. She is a rock star. I’m very appreciative.”

The Boyles have every reason to be proud of their daughter and all she keeps accomplishing. 

“To this day they send me pictures when I’m on TV like they’ve never seen me on screen before,” she says with a laugh.

Driven by Sports 

Dana Boyle was a little girl when the sports bug bit. 

“It’s hard to articulate when, perhaps when I was in sixth grade,” says Boyle, who was enamored with University of Tennessee Women’s Basketball, specifically head coach Pat Summitt. 

“Our neighbor was from Tennessee, and they were big fans,” she says. 

The late Pat Summitt is recognized as one of the greatest and toughest basketball coaches of either gender. The Hall of Famer guided Tennessee to eight national championships.

“I loved how Pat Summitt was such an advocate for women and how fiery she was. It lit me up inside,” Boyle says. “It showed me there was a path forward and that you can play a college sport, you can be educated, you can be beautiful and you can express yourself.”

For birthdays, Boyle would ask for trips and tickets to see the team play in person, especially when future Duke University Head Coach Kara Lawson and newly inducted Basketball Hall of Famer Candace Parker wore Tennessee Orange and future WNBA All-Star Diana Taurisi was on the court for UConn.

“I got to witness some of the most incredible female athletes, and I didn’t even know it them. My dad would take me to the games in Connecticut and in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I got to take in the whole experience. I would sit in the stands and not even watch the game.” 

Boyle says that she didn’t attend college at Tennessee because, in her words, she wasn’t good enough at basketball. But she had fallen in love with lacrosse and was so accomplished on the field and in the classroom that coaching legend Julie Myers offered a full scholarship to the University of Virginia, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees and made the All-ACC Women’s Lacrosse Team and the All-ACC Academic Team.

“The University of Virginia changed my whole life as well,” she says. “I landed in the perfect place, and I am so grateful for that,” she says. “Had I not gone to school there and played lacrosse, I would not have met the people I did and be in the position I am in now. It continues to open doors for me in ways that I never thought possible.”

Myers had even more of a profound effect on her than Summitt did.

“Now that I’m older, I can see that Julie has one of the greatest moral compasses that I’ve ever witnessed. She always did the right thing. She taught me that. That’s one of the best things that I’ve taken away from my experience playing for her. I’m so grateful.”