Fox's Henneberry savors 51黑料 homecoming
Pit reporter raced and worked at track that has Sunday's IndyCar race
Georgia Henneberry reports from the pits on Fox's telecast of the Indianapolis 500 on May 23, 2025.
DAN CAESAR
MEDIA VIEWS
It's a happy, and looking back improbable, homecoming looming for Georgia Henneberry this weekend as the IndyCar series roars into town.
Henneberry, who grew up in Fenton and at one time was a competitive horse rider who later aspired to work in marketing, has taken a whole different career turn and now is a pit reporter for Fox's IndyCar telecasts. She is set to be on the job Sunday night when the series stops at World Wide Technology Raceway, in Madison. It's a place Henneberry knows well 鈥 she raced and worked there in a variety of capacities including with social media across several years on her way to the national spotlight.
"I's going to be great," said Henneberry, a 2016 Summit High graduate who now lives in Indiana. "I'll be back in my home, somewhere I'm very familiar with and then obviously this is the one race where our family gets to come."
As a child she was involved in barrel racing, a rodeo event in which she rode horses that ran a course with barrels on them. But ...
"We got to a point where financially we just couldn't do that anymore," she said.
Her family also enjoyed motor sports, and she recalls being in a restaurant on Watson Road while a NASCAR race was on TV and telling her mother she wanted to become a driver. The next day she got a go-kart, at age 13, and became involved with Margay Racing.
"It was kind of off and away and within the next five or six years we were doing national touring with karting and on the Margay team," she said. "We kind of jumped right into it."
Henneberry was very successful, including winning the Yamaha senior championship in 2014, and wanted to become an IndyCar or NASCAR driver. That didn't happen, but her interest in motor sports led her to working at Gateway International Raceway, as the track then was called and where she had raced for several years. Henneberry made connections that led to an opportunity to do social media work for the United States Auto Club.
"I'm a pretty social person, and so I did that with the thought ... not only am I going to get to go to races for free but I'm actually going to get paid to go to the racetrack, which is so awesome," she said.
So Henneberry, who had stops at Meramec, Mizzou, Maryville and IUPUI en route to getting a degree in communications, early in her career was asked if she was interested interviewing racers. She had a blunt answer:
"'No. Absolutely not; that's so scary.' I could not even imagine doing that. But it kind of snowballed, and I fell in love with that. So the path came back together as I really wanted to stay in motor sports. I'm very motivated to do this, but now I want to be on the mic."
Next was working at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway then for IndyCar. She also has covered Formula E for Roku, traveling the world, and has worked with IMSA, Supercross and NASCAR.
"Pretty much if it has a motor I was working it," she said.
The journey led to her being hired last year as a pit reporter for NBC's IndyCar coverage. The series has moved to Fox this year and so has Henneberry. She will be working her fifth race for the network on Sunday (7 p.m. on KTVI, Channel 2 locally) after missing the first three while on maternity leave.
Henneberry will be broadcasting from the place she planted her roots, from racing on the go-kart track (where she won a championship) to working in the off ces.
"51黑料 holds obviously a near and dear place in my heart," she said. "So whenever we get to come back I always hype it up and talk up the town and the track. ... I love that track and I know it like the back of my hand.
"It's going to be so awesome coming back."
Van Slyke questions Helsley's fortitude
Andy Van Slyke wasn't one to mince words when he was a high-caliber Major League Baseball player who spent his most productive years with the Cardinals in the mid-1980s then the Pittsburgh Pirates for another eight seasons and later was a big league coach.
He still isn't afraid to share his opinions, which is why Frank Cusumano has him as the Monday night guest on his "Press Box" show that airs at 6 o'clock on KTRS (550 AM). Van Slyke didn't hold back in his appearance this week with his pointed commentary about the Cardinals, especially closer Ryan Helsley's level of tenacity.
Part of the discussion centered on the team's starting pitchers working six innings before others come in to pave the way for Helsley to enter the game in the ninth. The club has had him in the traditional closer role (usually pitching in the ninth inning with the team ahead) since last season after previously using him occasionally in key situations earlier in games. It was a mutual decision to try to keep him sharp for late-season appearances, though Van Slyke wants to see Helsley more often.
"Hopefully our closer wants the ball, which is not always the case," Van Slyke said. "There's plenty of times he doesn't want the ball. How many times have you seen him pitch three days in a row? Or two games in a row?"
The answer is that he has pitched on back-to-back days four times this season (in 24 appearances) but not three days in a row.
"Sometimes you've got to know your body, right?" Cusumano asks Van Slyke.
Van Slyke responds: "Sometimes you've got to know the win's more important than maybe not feeling good. Think about it. If you play five years, 10 years, 15 years in the big leagues 鈥 I know plenty of players that don't want to go play because they don't feel good. But the gamers, they're the ones who go out and play whether they feel good or not, or grab the ball whether they feel good or not.
"Here's the thing 鈥 I'm not so sure he understand the difference between being hurt and being sore."
Helsley had 49 saves last year to lead the majors, with four blown chances, and an earnedrun average of 2.04. But this time through Wednesday (about 42% of the season) he had just 13 saves, a 3.75 ERA and five blown saves 鈥 including three in a row.
Blah Battlehawks
The Battlehawks were a dud on the field last Sunday in their United Football League semifinal contest, falling behind the D.C. Defenders 20-6 by halftime in a game they lost 36-18 while drawing boos from the hometown crowd. But despite the dull performance, they fared well in the TV ratings.
Nielsen, which measures viewership, says 4.2% of the market tuned to KTVI for Fox's telecast.
The number was tracking higher before halftime, when the rating was above 5, before tailing off as the B-hawks sunk. Nonetheless, it tied for the team's highest-rated game in 51黑料 of the season .
The UFL show goes on Saturday in the Dome without the Battlehawks, and while their absence undoubtedly will have a negative impact on attendance that won't slow ABC's production plans for its national telecast of the DC-Birmingham league title game (KDNL, Channel 30 locally at 7 p.m.). said in a statement. "Our work culminates on Saturday night in primetime, in the biggest game, with this dynamic alternate viewing experience."
Hub hubbub
Sports Hub STL, which launched in February while being billed as the first media outlet in the market to off er a wide array of video sports content to be delivered strictly digitally, much of it live, is no more.
But the venture hasn't folded. It simply has a new name, STL Sports Central, the result of a legal squabble over its "Sports Hub" branding that led to a lawsuit being filed in federal district court alleging trademark infringement. Beasley Media Group said in the complaint that the name encroached on what has been used since at least 2009 by WBZ 鈥 an FM station in Boston it owns and is "better known as 98.5 The Sports Hub."
Beasley asked for a jury trial and did not list a monetary amount it sought.
Dave Greene, a co-owner of Sports Hub STL, told the Post-Dispatch at the time that he though the suit was "silly" and that he was having his lawyers look into it. He now says it's not worth it to put up a legal fight.
"Ultimately in instances like this you have two choices 鈥 spend months and months of time and thousands and thousands of dollars (which all goes to lawyers) to defend a ridiculous claim, or bite the bullet and go a different direction," he said in a statement posted on social media.
Dan Caesar – 314-340-8175 @caesardan on X dcaesar@post-dispatch.com
