Living Her Olympic Dream

Every two years, the greatest athletes from across the globe descend onto a single location and compete for honor, country pride, and the ever-elusive Olympic gold medal. 

This honor isn’t just reserved for the athletes though. 

A 2013 University of Maryland graduate and former Terrapin athletic department team reporter, Marisa Pilla will make her Olympic debut as a reporter for NBC Sports covering the United States women’s soccer team and the women’s gold medal match in Tokyo. 

In late 2019, Pilla knew that NBC Sports was looking for a reporter to cover Olympic women’s soccer. She had been in contact with NBC executives but unlike the athletes, Pilla was not in control of her Olympic fate. 

After months of painstaking silence, Pilla finally received the call. 

“My heart sank,” Pilla said. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”

What she heard was NBC Sports telling her that not only was she going to cover the U.S. Women’s National Team, but she was also going to cover the women’s soccer gold medal game. 

The Olympics were always something that Pilla was infatuated with because of the scope of the games and the idea of the best of the best doing what they love. 

“I am a huge softie … I cry at every medal ceremony,” Pilla said. “It’s just so emotional because you can only imagine the amount of work and sacrifice and dedication that went into becoming the best in the world at what you do.”

NBC assigning Pilla with this job is an indication that she too is among the best in the world at what she does. Not only are the Olympics designed for the best athletes in the world, but also the best sports media members. 

For Pilla, it’s a dream come true.

“I grew up a pretty big tomboy so I was always pretty fixated on sports,” Pilla said. “And just the idea of the Olympics I couldn’t wrap my head around it as a kid.”

That idea of hundreds of athletes from all over the world competing for one prize was as compelling as anything to her. 

“I couldn’t be pulled away from it,” Pilla said. “Everything from gymnastics to swimming to volleyball, and of course soccer.  I’m just so grateful to play such a tiny role in it and I’m so happy to do it.”

However, on April 12, 2020, just a few days after getting that life changing call, Japan and The International Olympic Committee did the unimaginable. They postponed the games. 

The world had been wracked for months by the COVID-19 pandemic but Japanese President Shinzo Abe had been steadfast in his belief that the Olympics were what the world needed at that time. Ultimately, the virus became too dangerous to ignore. 

After the postponement, Pilla was disappointed but she believed that the games would get played and that she would get to be there in-person. 

“I felt the athletes' pain,” Pilla said. “But within that year I tried to keep perspective and see the games as something to look forward to.”

The Olympic Committee and Japan were committed to playing the games just a year later in the summer of 2021 but that was from a guarantee. Even now, with multiple vaccines readily available, Japan is struggling to contain the virus.

Because of the influx of positive cases, the games will be held behind closed doors making just the athletes, coaches and media the only ones who will see the events live. 

Pilla’s no stranger in covering live events and that started while she was here in College Park.  

She covered the Maryland men’s basketball team in 2015-16 where she conducted one-on-one interviews with players and coaches as well as shooting, producing, and editing feature packages. 

This experience along with her training at the Philip Merrill School of Journalism helped pave the way for her current career. 

While Maryland is where Pilla honed her journalistic skills, her family is what made her fall in love with soccer. 

Pilla’s father, a semi-professional soccer player in Philadelphia and Delaware, gifted the love of the game onto his children. Both Pilla and her older brother were avid soccer players in their youth. 

“My father immigrated to the United States in the 1970’s and he was just in love with the game,” Pilla said. “We would watch Italian Series A games together every Sunday morning and he really encouraged me to watch and play.”

However, in 2005, Pilla’s father passed away after a battle with cancer and without him, the 14-year old lost interest in the game.

“I almost unknowingly pushed the game away,” Pilla said. “It wasn’t until I got to Maryland where the men’s and women’s soccer programs are so great that I got hooked back into it.”

With her passion reignited, Pilla combined her two loves of sports and journalism and carved out an impressive career path. 

Pilla has done work for ESPN, Fox Sports, CBS Sports and now NBC Sports to go along with her current job as a sideline reporter for the National Women’s Soccer League and as a host with the Philadelphia Union. 

In October of 2020 she launched her own podcast called PillaTalk where she gets to talk about all kinds of sports with a variety of guests, including Olympians like Carli Lloyd and Heather O’Reilly. Pilla gets to use this platform to talk on her own terms. 

“The idea is basically I interview people that I find interesting and hopefully you find them interesting too,” Pilla said. “In a broadcast sense there’s not always time to dive deep into a backstory and this kind of gives you a different perspective of how you view their game and how you view them as a professional.”

A Bucks County, Pennsylvania native, Pilla has become a mainstay in the Philadelphia sports scene and has elevated her status by having Philadelphia sports legends such as Julius “Dr. J” Erving and Brian Westbrook on her show. 

Despite being well-versed and knowledgeable about other sports, soccer remains Pilla’s go-to. Despite the loss of her father, soccer found its way back into Pilla’s heart and will remain there forever.

“Once I started covering soccer again it was a rekindling of that love,” Pilla said. “I had that love as a kid and I had it because of my dad.”