Fox Sports San Diego hires Julie Alexandria to join broadcast team

Today, Fox Sports San Diego announced that they had hired a new member for their Padres broadcast team. We knew there would be at least one new face among that team in 2016 since Kris Budden left at the end of last season.  The Padres sideline reporter role has been mostly a revolving door since Fox Sports San Diego started doing the club's broadcasts in 2012. Budden provided the most stability since she stuck around for 2 seasons. Here's hoping their latest hire provides at least as much stability.

Without further ado, the newest member of the team is Julie Alexandria. Fox Sports San Diego was kind enough to provide a press release for the announcement with some basic info about Julie:

FOX Sports San Diego (FSSD) today welcomes Julie Alexandria to their distinguished team of broadcast talent as Sideline Reporter for the upcoming 2016 San Diego Padres season.

Alexandria is an accomplished sports and entertainment host/reporter who most recently covered the 2015 US Open Tennis Championships and worked as an on-air host for OK! TV, a nationally syndicated talk show. Originally from Orange County, California, she began her sports reporting career hosting Mets Weekly for SportsNet New York.

Alexandria has since served as sideline reporter for MASN covering the Washington Nationals, worked college football sidelines for FOX and hosted the weekly College Football road show "Tailgate 48" for the Big Ten Network. On the entertainment side, she worked on shows for MTV, performed as backstage correspondent for the Miss USA Pageant and serves as a voice over artist for various TV and radio campaigns, video games and animated series.

Alexandria will be joining FOX Sports San Diego’s veteran team of on-air talent, which includes Hall of Fame broadcaster and 2015 Ford C. Frick Award winner Dick Enberg, former Padres pitcher and current color analyst Mark Grant, former Red Sox play-by-play announcer and future Padres broadcaster Don Orsillo as well as Padres Live host, Mike Pomeranz and analyst Mark Sweeney.

For those who use the Twitter, you can follow Julie at: @JulieAlexandria. She's got the checkmark and everything. She's JulieAlexandria00 on Instagram. Please give her a warm welcome from Gaslamp Ball.

One thing to note in the press release is that I don't see Ally Sturm's name mentioned with the broadcast group. Ally was in the fill-in sideline reporter and the host of Padres POV. I would have expected her name to be there, but maybe it's an omission. Or maybe we'll get another hiring announcement in the near future.

For my final note, it would seem that Fox Sports San Diego has a gender in mind for this sideline reporter role. After going through multiple hires over the past 4 years it seems that they (or maybe it's the Fox Sports parent) want a woman to fulfill this job. I'm not presenting this as a good or bad thing, but instead stating an observation about a pattern that has occurred.