Before her fourth season as the full-time public-address announcer for the Baltimore Orioles begins on Thursday, Adrienne Roberson brought her voice to the NHL.
Roberson shared PA duties for the Anaheim Ducks during a 3-2 overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning at Honda Center on Sunday, becoming the first woman to occupy that role in team history.
Roberson shared the microphone with longtime Ducks PA announcer Phil Hulett as part of the second annual Women in Sports Weekend, a two-day event that honored and highlighted trailblazers in women and girls’ sports with the goal of inspiring the next generation of athletes and leaders in Orange County.
Roberson is currently one of three women PA announcers in the MLB, joining Amelia Schimmel of the Oakland Athletics and Marysol Castro of the New York Mets.
"It was exciting to do hockey," Roberson said. "It's a lot faster action, clearly, than baseball, but I enjoyed it very much."
Roberson said she had to do a lot more math than she typically does at an MLB game, but there were plenty of similarities between the Orioles and the Ducks.
"We both have the orange color," Roberson joked.
Roberson was lured into PA announcing when she was a broadcast major at the University of Tennessee, working two jobs at the campus radio station and as a box-seat server for the Knoxville Smokies minor-league baseball team.
One afternoon, Roberson was called into the booth because the regular announcer had to leave early. She ended up holding the position for two years.
After graduating, Roberson found radio work in the Southern California desert town of Twentynine Palms and then Harrisburg, Pa. before her then-husband was transferred to Annapolis, Md., where she soon landed the PA job with the Bowie Baysox, the AA affiliate of the Orioles.
For the next 17 years she worked for the Baysox, adding gigs with Georgetown University along the way.
Roberson had applied for the full-time PA position with the Orioles in 2011, but finished second among 670 applicants. The organization kept her as a backup, however, and on Mother’s Day of 2012 she worked her first game at Camden Yards.
The person who beat her out for the job, Ryan Wagner, was fired hours before the team's home opener in 2021 and Roberson came aboard two weeks later as the first full-time female PA announcer in team history.
She doesn't plan to give up that role anytime soon, but if given the opportunity, she would love to announce another NHL game.
"If someone asked me, I'd be thrilled to do it again," she said.
