'She knocked down locker room doors': Debi Reed, first woman reporter to cover Colts, dies

INDIANAPOLIS -- The Indianapolis News sports desk was shorthanded the day after the Colts left Baltimore, sneaking away in the middle of the night in those Mayflower vans, to come to this city 40 years ago. Associate sports editor Lyle Mannweiler turned to Debi Reed and told her, "This is your story."

There were five editions to the newspaper back in 1984 and, for each new edition, Reed had a fresh story for a city ready to devour every bit of information about its new NFL team.

"At one point, one of the big bosses came into our office to make sure I didn’t want help," Mannweiler said. "I shooed him out, assuring him Debi had my complete trust. She earned her stripes that day."

Reed, one of the first women in the nation to cover an NFL team and one of the first female sportswriters in Indianapolis, died Thursday after a brief illness. She was 71.

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Born Aug. 29, 1952, Reed (formerly Despot) graduated from Center Grove High in 1970. She attended Ball State University where, years later, she would return as a journalism professor.

But first there was a newsroom calling her. Reed spotted a sports reporter opening at the News.

"In those days, you had to have thick skin to walk in the room of 11 or 12 guys," said Mannweiler, who went on to be an assistant managing editor at IndyStar. But Reed walked right in with an air of confidence mixed with humility "and we interviewed her, and we hired her."

'She had moxie'

During Reed's time at the newspaper, she wrote about everything from the LPGA tour to gymnastics to high school boys and girls sports. She covered Indy 500s and basketball and wrote a major piece on what happens to former NFL players who find themselves in financial straits after leaving the league.

Bill Benner was her "competition" as a sportswriter and part-time columnist for IndyStar at the time. Despite working for competing newspapers, there was no way not to love Reed, he said.

"She had moxie, which is what she needed at the time," Benner said. "And she was a good writer, for starters, but she had a strength of personality that enabled her to knock down some locker room doors."

Reed came along at a time when women nationally were just breaking into sports journalism. Lesley Visser was the first woman to cover an NFL team as a beat writer, reporting on the New England Patriots for The Boston Globe beginning in the 1970s.

"But Debi may have been, if not the first, certainly one of the first in sports print journalism in Indianapolis to establish herself," Benner said.

Reed wasn't the first woman to try to work on the newspaper's sports desk, but that first woman "didn't pan out," Mannweiler said. It was a tough role to take on as a female. Most people in those days still believed that women couldn't possibly know as much about sports as a man.

"She wasn't afraid to walk in the Colts locker room," said Mannweiler. "Which, let's face it, even today, I'm sure there's a lot of second thoughts."

Before the Colts came to town, Reed was often assigned to high school girls sports and even had a column called "Women in Sport" where she wrote about local athletes doing great things.

"Sure, she helped usher in gender but wasn’t hired to just do 'girls' sports," said Mannweiler. "I was comfortable assigning her to anything, surely more than some of the young guys."

And so in 1984, alongside dozens of men nationally covering the Colts' move to Indy, was Reed's byline splashed across the front page breaking the story to the city's readers.

'I was just doing my job'

Reed was at Weir Cook International Airport March 29, 1984, as Colts coach Frank Kush stepped off team owner Robert Irsay's private jet.

"After six weeks of rumors, no comments, high hopes and waning hopes, the Baltimore Colts are coming to Indianapolis," Reed wrote. "Kush, smiling and swinging a tennis racket was the first to confirm the Colts' move."

"I thought I was on my way to Arizona," Kush told Reed with a grin of the team's other potential destination. She then asked him if the Colts were moving to Indianapolis. "I assume that's why we're here," he said.

Reed then learned from the team's attorney Michael Chernoff that the Colts had moved in 15 Mayflower Transit vans the night before and set up in a vacant elementary school to be used as its temporary headquarters. From there, she began to follow the team.

Bob Walters, who was the Colts public relations director at the time, was there for Reed's first NFL locker room entrance working the door clearing media to go in for post-game interviews.

"I hesitated when Debi presented her credential, even though I had assigned it," Walters said. "But I first looked at Colts head coach Frank Kush, who happened to be standing nearby in the hall. He nodded to me and said, 'Let her in.'

"Debi took a deep, determined breath and in she went. Just doing her job. Gutsy and professional."

Being a woman never deterred her, Mannweiler said. "You could give her any assignment and she took it on no matter what it was without trepidation."

In her later years, Reed was always modest about her role as a trailblazer for women in sports journalism, balking at a request by IndyStar to do a story on her.

"I'm not sure it would be that interesting, honestly. I don't have any tales of being discriminated against by anyone, even the NFL, if you can believe it," Reed said at the time. "I think it's become so commonplace now that people wouldn't be terribly interested in my old and admittedly not very exciting story. If I'd faced a lot of hurdles, I might feel differently."

Reed did go on to tell a story that showed the rarity of her career.

"The one thing that did happen repeatedly was answering the phone in sports and having some guy, almost always a bettor in a bar, ask to speak to a sportswriter," she said. "They never ever believed I was one. Sometimes they went so far as to hang up on me and call back."

"You can write my story when I'm gone," she said at the time. "I was just doing my job."

Reed is preceded in death by her parents, John and Shirley Ann Despot. She is survived by husband, Don Reed, daughter Zoe Dorsey, stepdaughter, Lori Walker, grandchildren Chelsea Walker, Reed Dorsey and Ryder Dorsey, greatgrandchild Colton Rajabi, sister Joann Loftus (Dale), brothers John (Treesa) Despot and Tom (Becky) Despot and many nieces and nephews.

Visitation is 4 to 8 p.m. Aug 22 at Bell Mortuary in Fountaintown with the funeral at 11 a.m. Aug. 23 at Bell Mortuary. Burial will follow at New Palestine Cemetery.

Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via e-mail: dbenbow@indystar.com

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: 'She knocked down locker room doors': Debi Reed, first woman reporter to cover Colts, dies