Golden Knights TV reporter balancing mom life with work life

ANAHEIM, Calif. — It’s Oct. 20, and it’s another gameday for Ashali Vise.

Vise, the rink-side reporter for the Vegas Golden Knights, went about the early-season matchup with the Carolina Hurricanes as she would any other game.

She conducted interviews in the morning. Some more before the game. A couple more during the game. The Knights won 4-1, so she led the postgame press conferences in the locker room with the first couple of questions for each player. Vise had to make it count. This was going to be the last time she would be on TV for a while.

Because she was one week from her due date. And now she’s going to enjoy her first Mother’s Day as a mom.

“People thought I was crazy,” Vise said, laughing.

The timing worked out perfectly. The Knights had the next four days off before a three-game, four-day road trip on the East Coast. It was plenty of time for Vise to get everything in order.

Five days after the Carolina game, Vise gave birth to her first child with husband Nick, baby boy Jameson, at 12:25 p.m.

But if you thought that meant she could easily disconnect from her job, you don’t know her.

A relentless worker who has quickly risen up the ranks in the NHL broadcasting sphere, Vise felt she had to somewhat keep up with what the Knights were doing. They were in Florida to face the two-time defending champion Panthers that day.

Lying in her hospital bed, hours removed from giving birth, she had the game on TV.

The next day, the Knights were in Tampa against the Lightning.

“I was still in the hospital,” Vise said. “It’s like, ‘We’re just sitting here. What else are we going to do? We might as well flip on the game.’”

Adjusting on the fly

The past seven months have been a “whirlwind,” as Vise calls it.

Vise, 31, always knew she wanted to have a family some day. She found out she was pregnant in February last year, then slowly began telling people as the Knights were entering the playoffs. She continued to work through the first round.

She showed up to Knights development camp on June 30, baby bump and all, ready for work.

“It’s very interesting when no one knows that you’re pregnant and you’re standing in a locker room, dealing with some morning sickness and things like that, and people around you don’t really know,” she said.

The Knights were nothing but supportive. They tried to make it as smooth as possible for Vise, getting her input for everything along the way. Making sure she had all the time she needed with her family.

Vise continued to work as much as she could. Road trips were out of the question, but she still worked home games all the way until she couldn’t.

She arrived on opening night on Oct. 8 against the Los Angeles Kings with people thinking “I was a little bit crazy, because I was quite large and ready to pop on the gold carpet.”

“But it was, honestly, extremely rewarding, even looking back at photos doing interviews on the bench,” she continued. “I don’t know if he’ll play hockey — I would love it if he does — but I hope he thinks that it’s pretty cool that even when he was there in Mom’s belly, he was in an NHL rink or on an NHL bench.”

There’s the battle of learning motherhood on the fly, along with trying to still show you can balance that with a job that carries a lot of weight.

Vise said she still battles with the feeling that she’s letting people down by not working all the time. It’s the “mom guilt” of not wanting to let down the family she has at home and the family at work, she said.

“I’ve had support on both sides to let me know that I’m not letting anyone down by spending time with one or spending time with the other,” she said.

Trusting those around you

Jamie Hersch knows that feeling all too well.

Hersch, a former studio host for NHL Network, has worked with the Knights the past couple of seasons. Hersch assumed rink-side duties while Vise was on maternity leave.

Vise leaned on Hersch for advice on many topics, whether it came to being pregnant while working, or how to balance working while caring for a little one.

“I would say that the feeling is mutual,” Hersch said. “Ever since I moved to Las Vegas and tried to do any work with the Golden Knights, she was super welcoming and just such a team player and very supportive of me joining the fold.

“I know what it’s like to be a mom and a pregnant woman in this industry, and it’s not easy. But I wanted to make sure that she knew that it is possible.”

In turn, Hersch turned to Vise for help while Vise was away. Vise was a great resource for Hersch in navigating the game-to-game grind of the NHL season.

Hersch had prior experience as a field reporter for the Minnesota Twins, but the NHL was her first try at hockey from that perspective.

Little nuggets like plane etiquette, deadlines for projects and who were the best players to interview after a loss went a long way in helping Hersch for those four months.

“I’m just so proud of how she’s been able to try to balance it all and do what’s best for her. That’s not always easy,” Hersch said. “And also to be pregnant on TV, I think it’s a really nice visual statement to men, women, boys, girls watching that, that it is natural, that it is normal, and we don’t have to hide our pregnant bodies anymore when we’re doing our job on TV.”

Vise hopes that she can set an example on what it can look like for women to work in sports while pregnant.

“But I also think that whether women are working and juggling it all, or if they are spending the majority of their time at home making it a home, that that’s an incredibly difficult job on its own, as well,” she said.

A trip to enjoy

Vise returned to work in March. Her hockey family was ready to welcome her back with open arms.

When she walked into the Knights’ locker room at City National Arena, the players met her with an ovation. Some also stood and applauded.

“She was embarrassed by it,” Knights broadcaster Daren Millard said. “She turned a bit red.”

Millard, a longtime veteran in the broadcasting industry, had never seen that before.

“Guys are always happy to see you if they haven’t talked to you in a while,” Millard said. “But for them to have the awareness of what Ashali had gone through … was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”

That’s just part of what makes Vise so special in the Knights’ circle, Millard said.

“There’s the person, and there’s the co-worker,” Millard said. “The person is the most caring, genuine person. The professional side, she is, by far, the hardest worker in the group. I don’t think there’s a single person that would come close to raising an eyebrow to that.”

Vise was anxious when the Knights’ regular-season schedule came out because there was one trip she was hoping to go on — Vancouver and Seattle.

Her in-laws live in the Pacific Northwest, so the help was there. Nick — whom Vise called “Super Dad” — works remotely, so he was able to adjust his schedule. That allowed Vise to not only work those two games but be with her family on the road.

“That was extremely special,” Vise said. “That trip is something that I’ll always reflect back on and hope he thinks that it’s something really cool one day.

“There are times where I don’t know if I’m kind of failing at both things, and then there’s other times where it feels like I’m on top of the world. That trip was one where I was able to balance it all with both of my dreams and my biggest loves all coming together at once, and it was pretty incredible.”

When Knights players become dads for the first time, it’s usually the same reaction. When they come home, it doesn’t matter what happened in the game. They have something to look forward to.

Vise feels that same way. She would get anxious over a bad interview, how someone would react to a question, or even if a pregame interview went poorly.

That’s not the case anymore.

“Now you go home, and there’s this child who fully depends on you for any and everything,” she said. “Everything that mattered before, none of it is really that big of a deal, so just take it for what it is,” she said. “We work in sports. It’s fun. There’s no reason to stress to that level.”

Even though the team’s local broadcast has wrapped up for the year — with playoff games airing on national TV the rest of the way — Vise will still handle microphone duties throughout the run, conducting interviews at City National Arena and postgame at T-Mobile Arena.

It’s the perfect time to be at home and enjoy more of what’s been “a special time.”

“I didn’t know what to expect, just with it being our first baby,” she said. “Everything I imagined it would be, it’s been 10 times better.”