I used to be within the seventh grade the primary time sports activities writing gave me a visceral feeling. UConn capped a 39-0 season to win its third nationwide title in eight years, and I anxiously awaited the supply of Sports activities Illustrated.
When it arrived, Maryland’s Juan Dixon graced the duvet, however throughout the April 8, 2002, version of the journal’s prime, it learn: “UConn’s AMAZING WOMEN, Pg. 44.”
I instantly flipped previous “Faces within the Crowd,” the place you could possibly reliably see feminine athletes within the journal in 2002, and tore via the function that detailed the lives of UConn’s close-knit seniors: Sue Hen, Swin Money, Asjha Jones and Tamika Williams. How they lived collectively off campus. Cooked weekly household dinners. Fought over card video games and guess about who can be the primary to cry on senior evening. … I ate it up.
These particulars stayed with me years later, as a result of as a ladies’s school basketball fan within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s, there wasn’t a lot on the market to eat about probably the most thrilling groups and gamers. You hardly ever forgot something. Info simply existed in your mind (typically for the following 20 years).
After rereading the UConn story, I turned to the again web page to take a look at the column I at all times learn — “Lifetime of Reilly.”
The headline? “Out of Contact with My Female Facet.”
“You suppose it’s exhausting teaching within the Ultimate 4? You suppose it’s robust dealing with 280-pound seniors, freshmen with brokers, athletic administrators with pockets stuffed with pink slips?” columnist Rick Reilly started. “Please. Strive teaching seventh-grade ladies. After working with boys for 11 years, I helped coach my daughter Rae’s faculty basketball staff this winter. I realized one thing about seventh-grade ladies: They’re normally within the rest room.”
These few pages about UConn’s intense, elite ladies have been sandwiched by a three-word headline on the duvet and 800 phrases higher fitted to unhealthy motion pictures or lazy literature on the again web page. It was disappointing and irritating. Worst of all, even to my seventh-grade self, it was anticipated.
For a lot of sports activities historical past, ladies athletes (and their followers) have needed to settle for the highs with the lows and transfer ahead, understanding that too usually the lows have been intentional — a scarcity of funding, institutional assist or consideration. Later, these lows have been synthetic causes to proceed holding down and holding again the game. It’s the ladies’s sports activities Catch-22.
The “Caitlin Clark Impact” poured over into the WNBA this summer time, and groups throughout the league — not simply the Fever — drew report crowds and large TV scores. As the ladies’s school season started this week, even with out the celebrities that pushed ladies’s school hoops to new ranges, curiosity stays.
GO DEEPER
Paige Bueckers vs. JuJu Watkins: How UConn, USC stars will hold ladies’s basketball in highlight
Defending champion South Carolina offered out its season ticket packages for the primary time in program historical past. UConn offered out its season tickets for the primary time since 2004. LSU and Iowa, with out Angel Reese and Clark, respectively, offered out. Texas, Notre Dame and Tennessee are additionally reporting big will increase.
5 months earlier than the nationwide title sport, tickets are offered out for the Ultimate 4, and the resale market is buzzing. Nosebleeds for the nationwide championship sport are practically $200, whereas a courtside seat will run near $3,000.
For the primary time since 2004-05, our Gampel Pavilion season tickets are SOLD OUT!
Restricted season tickets stay for XL Heart video games ➡️ https://t.co/SLhPATBr4S pic.twitter.com/QGyhYGh81F
— UConn Girls’s Basketball (@UConnWBB) October 2, 2024
No one in ladies’s hoops has gained like Daybreak Staley — Ultimate Fours as a participant, nationwide titles as a coach, Olympic golds as a participant, Olympic gold as a coach. Her South Carolina workplace drips with memorabilia. But, amongst all of her particular accomplishments, this specific second in ladies’s school basketball feels uniquely totally different to her. “It looks like we’re free to simply discover the place this sport can go,” she mentioned. “There’s no boundaries on us, and due to that, you’re seeing expertise, you’re seeing teaching, you’re seeing fan assist, you’re seeing viewership — you’re seeing all of these issues.”
Staley speaks usually and brazenly about how the ladies’s sport was deliberately held again by so many for thus lengthy. First, by the exclusion of girls in sports activities earlier than Title IX. Then, by the NCAA, which prioritized males’s school basketball. Additionally, by tv media companions, which refused to place the sport in entrance of as many as doable (after which used that lack of viewers as a motive to not air it on main networks), and in print media protection, which refused to jot down about ladies’s sports activities (after which usually claimed nobody examine it).
Then got here final season. A 12 months during which the ladies’s nationwide title sport pulled in practically 4 million extra viewers than the lads’s title sport, simply three years after the Kaplan Report uncovered the NCAA’s intentional undervaluing of the sport and permitting its media companions to underpay.
“This,” Staley mentioned, with a pause, motioning together with her palms to point every part over the previous 12 months. “I by no means thought it might come throughout a time after I might be part of it.”
Anybody who has been round ladies’s basketball will share guarded optimism in addition to pleasure for this season. Will this lastly be the tipping level? Will the forces that held again the sport completely transfer out of the best way?
Tara VanDerveer has seen all of it, together with what she thought was the turning level. Twenty-two thousand individuals confirmed up for Iowa vs. Ohio State in 1985, her first season in Columbus. However it turned out to be an outlier. All through her profession, which started together with her driving the staff bus and doing the laundry as an assistant coach and ended final season at Stanford with three title rings and 1,216 profession wins, she skilled these begins and stops, occasions when a second might’ve become momentum if it had funding, assist and pleasure.
“We wanted to construct on that, not have or not it’s a one-off,” VanDerveer mentioned. “Preserving our eye on the ball, preserving having the sport develop. Extra younger ladies enjoying. Nice highschool tournaments, enthusiasm for the school sport. Folks being excited in regards to the WNBA.”
VanDerveer says as we speak looks like that.
Clark pushed the sport to new heights final season. This 12 months, USC’s JuJu Watkins, UConn’s Paige Bueckers and the Gamecocks — on a 39-game successful streak — are poised to proceed the momentum. NIL has utterly modified how ladies’s basketball gamers are marketed (and given them energy), bringing in new followers. The switch portal opened participant motion and democratized the sport’s growing parity. Go searching and also you’ll see as many as 10 groups that look able to heading to the Ultimate 4. Gone are the times when a UConn or Tennessee might win a lot they have been blamed as being unhealthy for the game.
Lower than per week into the season, we’ve already seen top-five groups pushed to the brink. The gifted stars in ladies’s hoops? They draw. However the parity, which has by no means been higher, and true perception that on any given evening, something might occur? That’s riveting.
What we’re seeing is lengthy overdue, and it nonetheless feels prefer it’s simply getting began.
For many years, ladies’s school hoops deserved higher than enjoying second fiddle within the NCAA’s orbit. It wanted to be untethered in order that the moments might match collectively into one thing larger and higher. It was worthy of greater than three phrases on the entrance cowl and a patronizing column on the again web page. It deserved the total unfold. So please, decision-makers and stakeholders, don’t mess this up.
There’s a brand new era of seventh-graders watching.
(Picture of Daybreak Staley: Sean Rayford / Getty Pictures)
