Former Olympian Bennett changes lanes

Plant City native Brooke Bennett says it's OK if a high school athlete doesn't know she competed in two Olympic Games, won three gold medals and even had her picture on a box of Wheaties.

That was her old job as a professional swimmer, one she performed at the highest level for nearly half her life. Now 29, Bennett has moved on to her next career, as a reporter for Bright House Sports Network.

Since joining the staff full time last month, Bennett has been covering prep sports in the Tampa Bay area. Sure, she has reported on swim meets. But she's also covered any number of other sports, including football.

And yes, most of the athletes she interviews are either unaware of her athletic background or simply too young to remember her standing on top of a medals podium.

"What I have found from going out on assignments is that the kids may not know me, but their coaches do," Bennett said. "They're the ones who remember the Olympics, the stories in the paper and on TV and what I did in the pool."

In fact, on a recent assignment at Wharton High covering the Wildcats boys basketball team, coach Tommy Tonelli made a point of introducing his entire squad to Bennett as a winner of three Olympic gold medals in swimming.

"It was a little embarrassing, and I told the coach 'No, no, this is about you, not me,'" Bennett said.

As a former professional athlete focused on training and competing, Bennett says she is still "on the learning curve" when it comes to covering sports. Despite the experience she has with the media during her career, she is also trying to grasp all that is needed to be the one doing the interview.

Elliott Wiser, Bright House's corporate vice president for local programming, says Bennett is picking up those aspects exceptionally well. Having seen other athletes attempt the transition to broadcasting, Wiser says it's sometimes difficult for them to switch gears and offer an opinion that could be viewed as controversial. But he says that's not the case with Bennett.

"Brooke is the most talented athlete-turned-TV personality I've ever worked with," said Wiser, whose daughter, Ashley, is a standout swimmer for Osceola High School in Pinellas County. "She's learning things so quickly, and her work ethic is just relentless."

Bennett says she hopes to bring her in-depth knowledge of training and the emotions felt by athletes during competition to her reporting.

"Even though I competed in a different sport, I think I have gone through a lot of the same things as the athletes I cover," Bennett said. "I think I can talk to them and their coaches, get to know what they're feeling individually and then try to present that to the audience."

Bennett has been a reporter for ESPN, working on the pool deck at the 2005 NCAA women's swimming championships. After that experience, she began to think she had a knack for the profession.

But after working as a personal trainer after her retirement from swimming in January, 2008, it wasn't until a chance meeting with Paul Kosuth, Bright House Sports Network's general manager, that Bennett decided to take a serious stab at broadcasting. Since doing her first story for Bright House - a feature on her former coach, Peter Banks - she hasn't looked back.

"My goals and expectations of myself are not minimal," said Bennett, who will be inducted into swimming's Hall of Fame in a May ceremony. "There are days when you might get frustrated because it doesn't come as easily as you'd like, but that's when you have to remember it's a marathon, not a sprint. And I still look forward to it every day, and each thing I do creates a different type of excitement."