As interviews go, it’s an easy 20-yard chip shot.
In a chummy, almost fatherly interview, Peter Boyles walks one-time University of Colorado placekicker Katie Hnida through her travails at CU and before on “Colorado Inside Out Live” (8 p.m. Tuesday, KBDI-Channel 12). Because Boyles is on vacation, the hour-long interview was taped.
Hnida, a flash point of the meltdown in the CU football program, relates how she was sexually harassed and, she says, raped by one of her teammates, although no one was named or charged. She’s been working the author circuit on TV and elsewhere, peddling “Still Kicking: My Journey as the First Woman to Play Division I College Football,” her tell-all book.
Hnida began a downward spiral, she says, with the shootings at Columbine High School. Although she attended Chatfield High School, she had friends at Columbine. “Columbine changed my life forever.”
A walk-on (nonscholarship player) at CU with coach Rick Neuheisel, Hnida sensed new coach Gary Barnett didn’t want her around. “There was something that was off. Something I couldn’t put my finger on.”
The most public arrow she took was Barnett’s unflattering dismissal of her kicking skills. “It was obvious that Katie was not very good. She was awful. You know what guys do – they respect your ability. Katie was a girl, and not only was she a girl, she was terrible. There’s no other way to say it.”
She tells of being confronted by a group of players after practice, “asking sexually explicit things,” leading Boyles to comment, “Is it inconceivable he assigned players to drive her off? I don’t think so. He had to know what was going on.”
Give Hnida credit. She stares straight into the eyes of what befell her and tells her version of what happened without blinking.
But Boyles, mentioning that he and Hnida’s father, Dr. Dave Hnida, have been good friends for years and that he’s known Katie since she was a little girl, never presses her about why she didn’t name names in the rape case, why she didn’t just walk away from the troubled football program at CU or whether she feels OK making book royalties from her travails.
Despite the setbacks and trauma, she doesn’t regret trying to make her football dreams come true. Her best advice to young women and girls: “Go for it!”
Around the dial
April Zesbaugh, Dave Logan, Lois Melkonian, Lou From Littleton and Bill Hanzlik broadcast on KOA 850-AM all day today until 10 p.m. at Samaritan House for an annual fundraiser. … Rick “The Coach” Marshall and J.J. McKay back at it, sort of. The one-
time morning team on KXKL 105.1-FM (“KOOL”) playing “real oldies” at jjandthe coach.com. … Quotable: “That was my dream, to be a Buff.” Katie Hnida
Dick Kreck’s column appears Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He may be reached at 303-954-1456 or dkreck@denverpost.com.
