Get to know CoolPlay Ambassador – Cato Louw
September 23, 2021

After falling in love with sport at a young age, Eastern Cape born Cato Louw jumped at the opportunity to study Sports Science after school, which she attended in East London. She ended up at Stellenbosch University and at ETA College with goals to learn as much as she can so she could not only talk-the-talk one day, but walk it as well.

Her love for sport (and people for that matter) spilled over into many conversations and because talking and engaging with various people was clearly a strong suit, she volunteered at MFM 92.6, a campus/community radio station in Stellenbosch. This was to gain knowledge and experience in the media industry and ‘earn her stripes’. Starting from the bottom and building her way up is something Cato is not afraid of.

Cato’s first radio broadcast was in June 2013, due to her passion for the medium and inner drive she moved through the ranks over the years hosting award winning shows in the Drive and Breakfast shows respectively.

In her time at campus radio, she was nominated for many SA Radio Awards, winning “Best Campus/Community Breakfast Show” in 2016 and was nominated for “Best Sports Show” for her 2017 show ‘HALFTIME’.

Cato managed to make the step up to commercial radio as a sports anchor on Cape Talk and KFM and soon after that also started as a Rugby Presenter on SuperSport. She is currently broadcasting daily on the Drive Time shows of the two stations respectively.

For SuperSport, over the last 5+ years she’s been chosen to anchor tournaments like Varsity Cup, the SA Schools International series, Currie Cup and also presented shows like ‘In Touch’ and ‘Super Rugby with Kobus Wiese’.

In 2021 Cato was also awarded the GSport – Women in radio award.

She firmly believes in: ‘Do it with passion or not at all’.

We asked Cato for a few questions and below is her response.

1. What are the lessons and values that you have learned by participating in sport?

I want to say all my values stem from sport, but my parents will never forgive me for that! Although, they are chuffed that all the good stuff rubbed off. From an individual perspective, sport taught me to never give up – no matter if you are winning or losing, keep going. Nothing beats that feeling of finishing and then from there you can always improve in whatever area is needed.

Sport also gave me the ability to work in a team. For one, to play to each other’s strengths means the team will succeed, which means I succeed as well. You always have a ‘team’ around you in some sort of way in one’s life and team sports taught me to appreciate them – because we all play a role and it’s important to acknowledge.

2. What is your sport of choice to participate in / to watch?

I love running! I started a running crew to make it more fun and more like a ‘team’ environment. I would like to participate in some other team sports maybe in the future, but for now I enjoy watching tennis, rugby, cricket, the recent Olympic and Paralympic Games – actually anything live and it’ll be on my TV!

3. What is your greatest achievement to date?

Just because I grew up watching the channel and dreaming of being part of this environment – I would say being on SuperSport is one of my greatest achievements. It was such a big personal goal for me, and I still remember people saying to me: “But how? How are you going to get there?” and well, I did it!

4. What is it about the CoolPlay Way which resonates with you?

It’s quite simple, the CoolPlay way is the way I approach life and I believe we can change many (more) lives for good with this approach! It’s something I truly believe in, no matter how glamorous or cool the elite sports look from the outside, the core of sport for me has always been: changing lives. And this is what CoolPlay does!

5. Personal mantra or motto that gets you out of bed in the morning?

I have loads! Just because each day is different and with these unique times we are living in, sometimes we need more than one motivation to get out of bed. Sometimes it’s just a good cup of coffee to get you going and luckily, I really enjoy my work, so it’s easy most of the time.

Some of my favorites are: “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard” and “Do it with passion or not at all”.

And when things get really overwhelming, my mom always says “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”