Ewing, NJ born Washington Settles in at Action News Philadelphia

by Jeff Garrett

It’s been three months since Ewing-born Renee Washington started her role as a sports reporter at ABC’s Action News in Philadelphia, with a focus on youth sports all the way up to the pros. As she told her Twitter followers in February, “Philly has given me so much as a three-time all-American and Hall of Famer at LaSalle and at Lehigh as a coach and reporter with ESPN. As a Jersey girl, I’m thankful to join the incredibly talented team,” at 6ABC as a sports reporter and anchor.

By all accounts, Washington, a threetime Division I Soccer AllAmerican and two-sport Division I athlete, who’s been brainstorming, pitching and delivering sports packages on high school basketball games since February, is a perfect fir for covering the important local sports category of high school sports. She covered many high school basketball games including regional and state playoff runs by area teams, the Penn Relays and was a part of covering of the Sixers 2023 playoff experience aside from many other assignments.

Washington reports from experience as an athlete and coach. She made the 2014 NCAA Top 50 women’s athlete list as a senior at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, achieving a B.A. in Public Relations, before moving onto Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA to obtain her Master of Education in Educational Leadership. Washington was inducted into LaSalle’s Athletic Hall of Fame in February 2022.

She coached women’s soccer as a graduate student at Lehigh in 2014 and 2015 and become involved in internships with their sports media department which pointed her in the direction of sports reporting as a career. As she told Lehigh University sports communication department in 2022, the origins of what she’s able to do at ABC Action News 6 started years ago, going back to Lehigh and even further.

“The inner athlete in me loves the excitement of being involved in games and having the chance to be apart of the action,” she told Lehigh in 2022. “I’m not on the field playing, but I can help paint a picture for viewers. I can give some insight into what’s going on on the bench, what the coaches are saying, what’s being said in the huddle, what the players are saying and feeling and giving people something extra they just don’t get from watching the game,” she again, told Lehigh in 2022.

The former New Jersey resident who graduated from Pennington High School in 2010 with outstanding accolades for soccer and basketball, thought about becoming a pediatrician when she was in high school. Her care and devotion to others took a new route, away from the playing fields no less.

She founded a nonprofit organization called, “Planted Not Buried,” which empowers, inspires and educates people through workshops, classes and events hoping to cultivate positivity, growth and perseverance through volunteer gatherings and collaboration for folks of all backgrounds. Washington continues to serve as a color commentator, play-byplay and sideline reporter for the tri-state region for ESPN. She also worked as a content creator for the Washington Mystics WNBA team, the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals, between 2019 and 2022 before working as a fill-in anchorwoman at WPHL 17 in Philadelphia covering Philadelphia Union MLS games. Close to where now to where she grew up, it seems that Washington landed pretty close to where she hoped to be doing something she loves.