How Dana Boyle Found Her Voice and Became a Fixture at ESPN

On the sidelines, you can’t pick favorites.

“I root for the sport,” ESPN analyst and reporter Dana Boyle said about her loyalties while commentating on college lacrosse.

But put Boyle anywhere near the basketball court and it’s a different story.

Her childhood bedroom on her family farm in Londonderry, New Hampshire, was decked out in all things Tennessee from floor to ceiling — literally. Her walls were painted to match the school’s signature orange and white checkerboard pattern. Boyle’s team was the Lady Vols.

What was a girl from New Hampshire doing rooting for Good Ol’ Rocky Top states away? Her next-door neighbors, Mary and Jeff Koon, were the original Tennessee fans on the block, and it didn’t take long for Boyle to fall into the fandom as she and her younger sister, Devin, hung out with the Koon’s two daughters, who were around their age.

“The only time I was allowed to stay up late as a kid was when the Lady Vols were on,” Boyle said. “For my birthday, I would ask to go to the UConn-Tennessee game either in Hartford or Knoxville.”

Watching the Lady Vols was Boyle’s introduction to women’s sports. She didn’t get her start in lacrosse until sixth grade, so Boyle grew up idolizing legends like eight-time national champion coach Pat Summitt and WNBA All-Star Kara Lawson.

Boyle first played soccer and rode horses, then she tried her hand at softball. Of course, basketball was in the mix too. She even got into baton twirling.

“That was not my thing,” Boyle said. “I remember I fought my mom over putting lipstick on for our final rehearsal. She was like, ‘I paid a lot of money for this sparkly leotard. You are finishing this out.’”

But like any middle schooler, Boyle wanted to spend as much time with her friends as she could. They were playing lacrosse, so she followed suit.

New Hampshire was not exactly a hotbed for the sport, so Boyle spent her summers traveling to all the big tournaments in Maryland and Delaware with her club team. She got invited to a few junior days, and that was when she found the University of Virginia.

Or really, that was when UVA found her. An All-ACC midfielder, Boyle scored 23 goals as a junior in 2013, a career year sandwiched between two injury-marred seasons. She also interned with Virginia’s athletics operations department. In the summers, she would work for Gerry Capone, the director of football operations at the time. Boyle credits him with kickstarting her career.

“She was always very curious,” Capone said. “She wanted to understand not just what the work was, but the why behind it. Dana attacked everything head-on.”

No job was too small for Boyle, either.

“I got coffee, and I got lunch. I copied papers, and I stapled those papers. I did everything,” she recalled of her first time working in sports.

After earning both her bachelor’s degree in sociology in 2014 and then her master’s in higher education in 2015, Boyle interned for the College Football Playoff. That’s when she really thought about broadcasting.

“I saw Sam Ponder and Maria Taylor and thought their job was so cool,” Boyle said.

Boyle decided to stay in Charlottesville, working in fundraising for Virginia athletics and then the engineering school. Then her home team reached out. UVA needed a lacrosse broadcaster coinciding, and they knew Boyle from her days working in football. She jumped at the opportunity to talk lacrosse.

Soon after, ESPN came calling in need of a new lacrosse voice coinciding with the launch of the ACC Network in 2019. Boyle jumped on that opportunity too. She joined the Worldwide Leader as an analyst for college and pro lacrosse, making her live TV debut March 5, 2020, as an analyst for the North Carolina-Louisville game in Chapel Hill.

A week later, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Everything shut down. “I did one game and then the season ended,” Boyle said. “I was like, ‘I’m never going to get another shot at this again.’”

Even when college lacrosse resumed in 2021, there were no spectators nor broadcasters allowed in venues. ESPN produced games remotely and Boyle provided commentary from her Charlottesville home no matter where they took place.

“Our first game together was online,” ESPN play-by-play commentator Anish Shroff said about working with Boyle. “I honestly heard that she might have been related to Ryan Boyle in some way.”

(For the record, DB is not related to RB, the Hall of Fame former Princeton player who became a staple of Premier Lacrosse League broadcasts. Not a bad last name to share in the lacrosse world for either party, though.)

As the pandemic waned and sports resumed with crowds and in-person coverage, Boyle became a fixture at ESPN. She started covering college football in 2024.

But lacrosse remains her passion. From playing the sport to commentating on it, Boyle has seen every part of the game. When she was growing up, lacrosse was never on TV. Being able to give the sport a platform fuels her inner child. The little girl who looked up to the Lady Vols is now helping the next generation of female athletes watch their own Candace Parkers. Or in this case, Taylor Morenos, Ally Mastroiannis and Charlotte Norths.

Boyle, who coached at Western Albermarle High School and led the Warriors to the 4A state championship game in 2019, is an inspiration in her own right. It certainly didn’t take long for Shroff’s daughter to hop on the Boyle bandwagon.

“A couple years ago, I took my now 8-year-old daughter to the ACC championship weekend for women’s lacrosse in Charlotte,” Shroff said. “She was yelling ‘Dana! Dana!’ from the stands and after the game the girls were doing cartwheels on the field. That’s how you make a kid a fan for life.”

Most recently on the college scene, Boyle covered both NCAA lacrosse championships, hosting a studio show during the women’s quarterfinals and working as the sideline reporter during the men’s final four at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, home to UVA football and to Boyle herself.

“I was excited for everyone to see how special a place Charlottesville was,” Boyle said. “Of course, then it was raining and everyone was freezing so that wasn’t great. But anytime you get to cover a national championship in any sport is extremely gratifying. To get to do that at home in the community I live in, I’m so grateful for that.”

Capone was there on Memorial Day watching Boyle report from the sideline. Her Cavalier teammates send screenshots of Boyle live on air all the time no matter the sport, and her head coach Julie Myers frequently tunes in too.

“I still feel emotions when I walk the Grounds, and I graduated in 2014,” Boyle said.

Luckily for the Hoos and all the lacrosse junkies tuning in every gameday, there was no women’s lacrosse team at the University of Tennessee.

And for Dana Boyle, well, it was always the right place at the right time.