Playing make-believe pays off big-time for Kustok

Sarah Kustok used to be a big phony. A fake.

That's how the former DePaul basketball star got good at TV. Good enough, in fact, to earn a full-time position at Comcast SportsNet, where she has been reporting, anchoring and putting together feature stories for the network since January.

She may have one of the most exciting gigs in town now, and certainly did when she was covering that magical playoff series between the Bulls and Celtics, but it was spawned from the humblest of beginnings.

Early on, Kustok could only pretend she was a television reporter.

"When I first started in TV, I was a production runner for football games on ESPN and we spent a lot of time (at the game site) on Friday and early Saturday morning getting ready," Kustok said. "I knew TV was something I wanted to get into so whenever we had any downtime, I would grab a cameraman and ask if he would help me create (a tape).

"We would do fake stand-ups, fake interviews, fake reports from the sideline. I would just pretend that it was me that was going to be the sideline reporter for the game that weekend. It was pretty funny. The first few tapes weren't very usable. (Laughs) But it got me more and more comfortable in front of the camera and things just kind of snowballed from there."

Indeed, they did.

Soon after, the 27-year-old Kustok landed a job doing sideline work at IHSA state championship football games. From there, she went to roaming the sidelines at college football games for ESPN.

Then she started doing consistent freelance work for Comcast SportsNet, a features show about high school athletics called "High School Lites," and a fun sports trivia show called "Beer Money."

Before she knew it, barely three years into her quest to land her dream job, Kustok did just that. She got a job reporting about major-league sports in her own major-league town.

"I am definitely living the dream," said Kustok, a 2000 graduate of Sandburg High School in Orland Park. "I just feel so lucky. To be doing what I'm doing for a station like Comcast SportsNet here in Chicago, it's something I dreamed of. This is everything I ever could have hoped for and I enjoy it more than I ever dreamed I could."

Then again, what else would you expect from a sports junkie who grew up around sports and was a star athlete herself?

Kustok's father, Al, was an offensive lineman at Illinois and her brother Zak was a standout quarterback at Northwestern about eight years ago.

At Sandberg, Kustok was a star basketball and volleyball player and was offered college scholarships in both sports.

A hoops junkie, choosing basketball was easy for Kustok. She loves it so much that she still goes out of her way to play in pick-up games.

"I absolutely think (being a former athlete) helps in this job," Kustok said. "When athletes or coaches or other people in this business hear that you played, I think that lends some credibility. I think the athletes might think you know what they're going through a little bit, that you understand."

But as much as Kustok can relate to athletes, she's also becoming more and more comfortable within the media fraternity. She says she still keeps in touch with some of those cameramen from her early days.

"The cameramen were so great, so supportive," Kustok said. "Whenever I see them, they're always laughing and saying, 'Oh, we know where it all started.' "

pbabcock@dailyherald.com