Long before ESPN’s Sage Steele landed her high-profile gig as studio host for ABC’s coverage of the NBA Finals, she volunteered for a position she didn’t receive.

Steele, then a teen living in Colorado Springs, wrote a letter to her childhood obsession, John Elway, and offered to baby sit his kids. For free.

“How random and stalkerish is that? I never heard back,” said Steele, who lived in Colorado Springs from seventh grade through her junior year at Doherty High School.

While most kids ease into sports fandom, for Steele it was thrust on her. A self-described “Army brat” – something she still mentions second to being a mother of three on her Twitter handle – she arrived in Colorado after spending most of her early life in Greece and Belgium. The daughter of Gary Steele, a trailblazing athlete at Army, sports were always a part of life for she and her younger brothers, Chad and Courtney, but their exposure had been as participants or through whatever the Armed Forces Network, their only English-speaking TV option, had to offer.

Even as the movers hauled in furniture in her new Colorado Springs home, she hooked up a small television and became enthralled by the 1984 Olympics. She was in awe to the point where she announced at dinner that she wanted to be a sportscaster.

Then came Elway, the Broncos and three trips to the Super Bowl in the 1980s. She was beyond hooked.

“I fell in love with John Elway and the Broncos immediately, and I really believe that my time in Colorado helped shape this, helped shape my dream for my career,” Steele said.

Steele lettered in track at Doherty, but she said she was distracted as an athlete because of equestrian activities with horses she raised near Calhan.

Her father remained stationed at Fort Carson though her junior year, then moved the family to Indianapolis.

“That was the worst. That was my hardest year,” she said. “We had spent five years in Colorado Springs, which was the longest we’d lived anywhere in my life. That was home. That was terrible.”

Humility remains

In an age before the Internet or Facebook, she slowly lost track of her friends in Colorado. She graduated high school in Indianapolis, went to college at Indiana, married Jonathan Bailey, a native of the Hoosier state and landed her first job there. So, over time, the place she considered home shifted.

Doherty lost track of her as well. Longtime athletic director Chris Noll, who was making his way through District 11 by way of Mitchell about the time Steele attended Sabin Middle School and Doherty, had no idea she had attended the school.

“She went to Doherty? That’s cool,” Noll said.

But moving is part of the fabric of life for military families, something she and her brothers have come to embrace.

Gary Steele’s father, Sage’s grandfather, was a Buffalo Soldier who served in World War II. Gary and his brother, Michael, followed those footsteps by attending West Point.

A member of the Class of 1970, Gary Steele was inducted into the Army athletic Hall of Fame in 2013, an honor he might have received solely on the strength of his groundbreaking role as the Black Knights first African-American letter-winner in football if he hadn’t also happened to be a standout in football and track.

Steele, who rose to the rank of colonel, caught 66 passes for 1,111 yards and seven touchdowns as a tight end. He twice helped Army beat Navy and he caught eight passes for 156 yards against No. 4 Penn State in 1968.

Not that he told any of this to his kids.

It wasn’t until Chad Steele was in college and he introduced himself to former Penn State great Charlie Pitman that he heard a first-hand account of his dad’s greatness.

“Charlie Pittman said my dad was the greatest football player he ever played against,” Chad said. “I finally asked my dad why he never told us this, and I’ll never forget what he said. He said, ‘What does that have to do with me being your father?'”

That humility, ingrained in the family, has helped Sage, now 42, deal with the unexpected fame that her career path has brought.

Realizing she didn’t have the ability to make it as an athlete, she entered sports broadcasting as a way of remaining connected to her passion. She climbed the ladder from a station in South Bend, Ind., to Indianapolis to Tampa, Fla., to Bethesda, Maryland, until she finally debuted on ESPN on “SportsCenter” on March 16, 2007.

“My goals were never to be famous or make a lot of money,” Sage said. “What has come with this is something that I was ill-prepared for. I never cared about anyone knowing who I was.

“I’m not allowed to be anything but humble in my family. That wouldn’t be tolerated. If I ever did get a big head, I would have a very long line of people waiting to put me back in my place.”

Coming out of her shell

To her family, Sage’s overcoming of her introverted nature is a most surprising aspect. She was so shy as a youth that her parents took her to a doctor to make sure this anxiety wasn’t out of the norm.

“They crack up when they watch me now on national TV,” Sage said. “Millions of people watching the NBA Finals and I’m front and center. They just shake their head and say, ‘Who is this child? This can’t be the same person.'”

Again, this is something she traces to her roots as an Army brat.

When playing as a child in Belgium, she can recall five languages being spoken on a playground. She had to find a way to not only step out of her shell, but be creative in the way she communicated.

“I think moving around helped Sage and I in what we do because we have to deal with so many different people, so many different personalities,” said Chad Steele, who has worked in media relations for the Baltimore Ravens for 13 years. “I know it helps me, because we have 53 people on our active roster and 53 different personalities. And obviously you deal with Ray Lewis much differently than you do with Joe Flacco.

“So it helped to round me out as a person, and I know it has with Sage, too.”

It’s something she carried into her professional life. She convinced herself to talk to the camera as though it was a friend or family. To this day, she grows far more nervous talking to live crowds than when appearing on television.

And through experience, her nerves have disappeared when interviewing famous athletes or sharing the stage with them, as she will during the upcoming NBA Finals with Jalen Rose, Doug Collins and special guest Dwyane Wade.

Of course, there was one celebrity who Steele couldn’t treat with the same nonchalance.

One of her first jobs at ESPN was giving updates on “Mike and Mike in the Morning,” and host Mike Greenberg knew about her obsession with John Elway. So one day he introduced the Hall of Fame quarterback to Steele, who instantly reverted to her 15-year-old self.

“I was dying. Of course, what do I do? I got really nervous and talked too fast,” Steele said.

She opened up to Elway about the details of her obsession. She told him about her Halloween costume as “Mrs. Elway,” who was pregnant at the time, so Steele stuffed a pillow under her shirt to follow suit. She mentioned the poster that hung above her dorm bunk bed. She told about her rituals of wearing her Elway jersey to Doherty every Friday before home games and of her superstitious insistence on following numerous game-day rituals.

“He kind of backed up, like, yeah nice to meet you. Like he was running in the opposite direction,” Steele embarrassingly recalled. “So, that went well.

“But it was my love of that team and him, that really cemented in my mind what I wanted to do for a living. Even though he thinks I’m a crazy person, I have to thank him.”

And while Steele will always hold Elway in a special place, she feels the same way about the city that was once her home.

“I feel like I grew up in Colorado Springs,” she said. “You get to college and then jobs and then kids and you just don’t get back. But for me, when I see Pikes Peak on TV I get emotional. I remember seeing Pikes Peak every morning out my bedroom window. I just love that city and I love that time in my life because it was truly the only home I had ever known.”