COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (May 18, 2021) – Three-time Paralympian and gold medalist Kari Miller-Ortiz may have retired from the U.S. Women’s Sitting National Team, but she has not left her sport behind.
NBCUniversal announced Monday that Ortiz would be the color commentator for its Tokyo sitting volleyball broadcast. She will work with retired ice dancer Tanith White, an Olympic silver medalist.
“I am super excited about this, I just think this is going to be so much fun,” Miller-Ortiz, 44, said in a story on TeamUSA.org. “When I retired from sitting volleyball, I felt it was the right time. As time went on, I started to feel a little disconnected from the team and sport. It was my life for so long, and then I was gone from it.
“I never thought about doing broadcasting, like never have done it at all, but when NBC asked me to consider auditioning for this, I thought, ‘Why not?’”
Miller-Ortiz retired from the Women’s Sitting Team the year after the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympic Games where the team won the gold medal. She also won silver medals with the team in Beijing 2008 and London 2012.
She is a retired Army sergeant who now works in veteran affairs and is the manager of outreach for veterans and people of color at Maximus.
NBCUniversal will broadcast a record 1,200 hours of coverage of the Tokyo Paralympic Games this summer from Aug. 24-Sept. 5, 2021. NBCUniversal’s Paralympic coverage, which will once again be presented by Toyota, will include more than 200 hours of television programming across NBC, NBCSN and Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA and the first-ever primetime hours on NBC, as well as 1,000-plus hours of streaming coverage.