It didn’t take long for anchor and reporter Sherree Burruss to understand the psyche of the championship-starved D.C. sports fan after she arrived at WRC-TV (Channel 4) from Atlanta in December 2016. During one of her first days on set, Jim Vance voiced his frustration with his beloved Washington Redskins, who had blown an opportunity to clinch a playoff spot with a loss to the New York Giants in the final game of the regular season.
“Literally, the next day it was in The Washington Post,” Burruss, who went to high school outside of Chicago and graduated from Wisconsin, said of Vance’s comments. “And I was like, ‘Oh my goodness; this is wild.’ There were these instances where [fans] were like, ‘Ugh, this is so D.C.’ You could just sense the pain because people were so scarred from years past.”
Vance died of cancer seven months later, and while the Redskins still haven’t won anything of consequence since their 1992 Super Bowl triumph, Burruss would cover multiple titles by D.C. teams over the next three years. In December, she said goodbye to her WRC family and the District of Champions after covering one more Redskins loss. On Monday, she started a new chapter of her career in Connecticut as an anchor and reporter for CBS Sports HQ, CBS’s 24-hour streaming sports news network.
Bittersweet goodbye: After 3 incredible years in DC, it’s time to move on. My last official day will be Sunday’s Redskins game. I can’t thank everyone enough for making DC feel like home. I’ve loved every minute of it & will look back fondly on all the amazing memories made here! pic.twitter.com/aJ6Y0EPYfB
— Sherree Burruss (@SherreeBurruss) December 13, 2019
“I had three wonderful years in D.C.," Burruss said. “You can’t really complain when you have two championship parades and the Mystics winning, but growing up, in my heart of hearts, I’d always wanted to work at a national network. … I’ll be doing some reporting and some hosting. It’s just kind of the culmination of everything that I got to work on at News 4, on a bigger stage. They did a very good job of preparing over there for what is next."
Burruss joins the likes of Lindsay Czarniak, Dan Hellie and Dianna Russini on the list of former WRC sports anchors who moved into national roles. In addition to studio work, Burruss said she is “over the moon” about the opportunity to do sideline reporting for college basketball games. Her first such assignment will bring her back to the familiar confines of Capital One Arena, where Georgetown hosts Creighton in a Big East showdown Wednesday.
Burruss hadn’t covered hockey before coming to the District, but she received a crash course in Capitals playoff heartbreak after only a few months on the job, when Washington lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the second round of the 2017 playoffs. The following year, she helped document the Capitals’ first Stanley Cup title and the celebrations that followed deep into the summer. Burruss was in Pittsburgh for Evgeny Kuznetsov’s overtime winner to clinch Washington’s first trip to the Eastern Conference finals since 1998, and she was in Tampa for the Capitals’ Game 7 win two weeks later. She covered Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals in Las Vegas, but a prior commitment caused her to miss the rest of the series.
“I don’t think I’d call it bittersweet, but I did miss the Caps actually winning because I got married,” Burruss said with a laugh. “I watched Game 5 on my honeymoon in St. Lucia, which, you know, is special in its own right.”
When the Capitals win on your wedding night! @Capitals @NBC4Sports @nbcwashington #ALLCAPS pic.twitter.com/9KCA27ROp2
— Sherree Burruss (@SherreeBurruss) June 3, 2018
In 2014, while working in Columbia, Mo., Burruss covered the Kansas City Royals’ World Series run, which ended with a Game 7 loss to the San Francisco Giants. She had always wanted to report from a champagne-soaked, celebratory clubhouse. She got that opportunity this past October in Houston, where the Nationals capped their remarkable season with a Game 7 win over the Astros, just three weeks after the Mystics won the WNBA title.
“We had goggles, and the goggles pretty much did nothing,” Burruss said of the joyous scene in the visitors’ clubhouse at Minute Maid Park.
Burruss said she’s looking forward to the opportunity to cover more big events, including the Super Bowl, though she intends to keep up with the players and teams she got to know in the District over the past three years from afar.
“I’m just so appreciative of the support I got from everyone there,” Burruss said. “People were so willing to give me a chance and were so welcoming, always saying hi at sporting events. D.C. will always have a piece of my heart. We miss it dearly, so we’re looking forward to getting back whenever we can, hopefully for more championship games in the future.”
LAST DANCE: The #PostShowPump says goodbye to @SherreeBurruss! 😭 @MlinaresDC @HeatherMcD4 @somaratheodore pic.twitter.com/o3VmO0ILNz
— Danny Favret (@Danny_Favret) December 13, 2019
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