Thanks, Caitlin. (Clark, University of Iowa, WBB record-breaker extraordinaire).
At long last, women’s sports are shining brightly under a very powerful spotlight.
(And—thanks to the gear of the clothing brand Togethxr (namely their EVERYONE WATCHES WOMEN’S SPORTS hoodies) and celebrities like Chelsea Handler and Jason Sudeikis wearing said hoodies and getting lots of eyeballs on TV and social—women’s sports are stylish too.)
It’s 2024, some 52 years after the passage of Title IX and watching women’s sports is somehow (suddenly) cool (finally!), as TV ratings and ticket prices attest; both don’t lie and both were higher for the women’s Final Four and the Finals than for the men.
Go women.
Go sports.
In the inimitable and melodious words of Lizzo, “It’s about damn time.”
This is definitely something to feel good about this Friday.
It’s great.
And it’s also not that great.
Now I know some people will say “can’t you just be grateful for this shining moment?”
I am grateful. But looking at the bright lights of glory can blind us to that which surrounds it.
Did the eclipse this week not teach you anything about staring at the sun?
Quick aside, the eclipse was fantastic. I was sitting pretty out back with my eclipse glasses from the library, peepers protected while I enjoyed the spectacl. We got to about 92% totality, and it was pretty cool.
Anyhow, this moment that women’s sports is having is fantastic, yet it is also inexplicably yet completely understandably overdue.
Amazing women have been doing amazing things on the sports scene for many years. And not-so amazing women having been working just as hard playing sports out of pure love of the game. This post is mostly about basketball, mainly because the season just ended and it’s a sport I’m familiar with.
In any case, I do not believe that women’s basketball is surging in popularity because it is played at a more elite level today.
Rather I believe that attention is being paid to women’s sports (specifically basketball) at a less Neanderthal level. I think when Sabrina Ionescu went head-to-head with Steph Curry in their 3-point shooting contest, it went a long way in leveling perceptions of the playing field. She shot from the men’s 3-point line and he won by a nose. It shut a lot of people up.
Quick backstory so you know where I’m coming from. I played all four years in college at a strong D3 program back in the olden days when sports bras were not mainstream and only came in white (forget colors or prints or compression), when our sneakers and practice clothes were in men’s sizing. We got maybe two dozen fans a game, mostly parents. There was absolutely nothing glamorous about it. The coach was a mean bastard and would have been fired long before I ever played on his team if today’s “standards” existed then. It was about love of the game, camaraderie, and friendship (to some extent—teamwork in team sports is tricky, because everyone wants to play and some people spend more time angling for playing time than anything else, but I don’t have time to go into those dynamics). And for me it helped to shorten the Maine winters too.
So that’s the angle at which I view this.
Things have change a lot relative to my own experience, that’s for sure.
But there’s still a long way to go, as evidenced in the disparities/double-standards that still exist—there’s different drama when it comes to player-coach dynamics in the women’s game, lots of chatter about women’s looks, plenty of commentary on what they wear, how they act. The spotlight brightens everything up, and the downside of that is it enables the haters to examine everything in painstaking detail when they put the women’s sports scene under a microscope.
It’s not like that with the men’s game.
So maybe women have a chip on their shoulder. They have had to work harder for less (including attention) and they still are judged more harshly. That’s no different than anywhere else, really, when it comes to women doing “men’s” things. Women are constantly being called out for virtually everything they do and don’t do, particularly if they don’t adequately lift each other up. Women are expected to be nice; apparently its only ok for men to be hard-nosed and competitive.
Yes, the tide is turning now, and for that I am grateful. But there’s still work to be done.
From where I sit, women’s sports has always been worth watching; it’s just now that the masses are getting it. Women who really watch sports have always watched women’s sports. We have always understood and appreciated commitment, hard work, and excellence. We’ve always known how hard it is to compete with each other and for each other (and at times against each other, which is counterintuitive but true; see “playing time” above). The fact that women are legit ballers is not news to us. We celebrate Tara VanDerveer’s retirement as the all-time leader in college basketball wins (men or women) after 45 years of coaching (38 with Stanford). We were saddened when Alzheimer’s took the game—and then life—away from Pat Summit. We remember C. Vivian Stringer darting “loudly” up and down the sideline at Rutgers and the Gail Goestenkors years at Duke. We’ve got Lisa Bluder in her 24th year at Iowa—how hard did she work and how many amazing players did she coach before Caitlin Clark came along? We remember our excitement when the WNBA started (I wish I still had my “A women’s work is never done” t-shirt from those early years (the first year?)). I was 30 when that league started, eight years removed from my men’s shorts and sneakers, and still remember watching each of those eight founding teams play whenever they were on TV (not often).
Welcome to the bandwagon, folks. We’ve been having a great time here forever. Better late than never, and way better late than pregnant.
And here are some other things that have me feeling good today:
I walked by a yard sign the other day that said, “love always wins” and I spent the rest of the walk thinking about that. It does and it doesn’t. But here’s the thing, unlike basketball, life—and love—isn’t a game. Love doesn’t need to win. It just needs to be. Love isn’t a player in a game, but it is the best medicine there is. And the greatest thing about it is it’s a drug you cannot overdose on it. You can never have too much. So just go on you and surround yourself with as much of it as you can, and soak it all in. And let it float you when the waters get rough.
So speaking of being surrounded by love, on Tuesday my mom got home from her winter in FL. I hadn’t seen her in about two months, so it was great to put my eyes on her. It’s great that she has someplace to go, but it’s greater that she’s home again.
Not to belabor the point about love, but here’s another. One of my besties had business in MA yesterday which involved a stop at our house. Nothing better than the warm love of old friends.. The weather cooperated long enough that we were able to take my favorite walk (yay!) after which we picked up my mom and brought her over for a visit and dinner. It was awesome all around.
Last weekend we went to Foundry on Elm (in Somerville) for a very fun 40th birthday party. We took a Lyft in and arrived early to pregame. I had drink called Lost at Sea, and it was divine. It introduced me to the concept of fat-washed bourbon, and in this case the fat was coconut. It was a tiki-ish drink, something I never would have expected with bourbon, and it was delicious—it transported me to a tropical destination. Needless to say, I’ve got my coconut oil ready to go, I’ll be washing my bourbon over the next week or so, and I will report back. I grabbed some fresh-pressed pineapple juice when I saw it at the store and need to pick up some Campari—then it’ll be 5 o’clock somewhere. Another vice is born.
I come from a family of five so it seems appropriate to end on this fifth and final happy thing—my sis, bro-in-law, and niece are coming to town for the weekend to visit my other niece and the rest of us. I can’t wait to see them, and I’m sure the weekend will be action packed. (And full of love!)
Happy Friday—thanks for spending part of it here with me. It means the world and offers even more confirmation that one can never have too much love in one’s life.
Have a great weekend.
Love you too.