Some Dribble Babble

I love women’s basketball. It’s just as simple as that. It’s not my whole life… I don’t live and breathe women’s basketball every waking moment, but when all is said and done, I think it can safely be said that I love the game.

It’s not always easy. You get sneered at by anti-gynecoathlephiles — usually men, and are treated with wonder, and sometimes suspicion, by some of the usual women’s sports’s fan base: women. It gets tiring trying to justify your love of a sport. And it’s not even a fringe sport. We’re not talking barrel-jumping on ice skates here, we’re talking women’s freakin’ basketball. Sometimes I just have to shake my head in wonder about the path that brought me here.

As a wee child, I was raised with the usual diet of football and baseball. Of course, this is back when the pro salaries were measured in thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars… not the hundreds of thousands to the over ten million dollars athletes (mostly male) garner these days. I followed the likes of Brooks Robinson and “Boog” Powell. I stared at television images of Johnny Unitis. (Can you tell I spent time in the Baltimore area? :-)

My first taste of women’s sports occurred around the 1968 Olympic Summer Games in Mexico City. Because of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, I saw the likes of Wyomia Tyus, Debbie Meyer, Ludmilla Tourischeva, and of course Cathy Rigby. They are the images that have remained in my head from that year… not so much Bob Beamon, not Al Orter, not Tommie Smith, Lee Evans, or Bill Toomey. (I will concede to remembering the runner Kip Keino — who ushered in the era of Kenyan distance runners.)

It was but two years later that I found myself relocated to the DC area. One of my first friends there was a young female athlete, Pergola[[startto]]. It’s hard to think of any of the neighborhood pick-up games in which she didn’t participate. Basketball, football, baseball–what have you–she was very often there. Then again, it was amazingly egalitarian back then. After-school games of basketball were almost always gender-mixed affairs. Nothing at all out of the ordinary about that.

Add into the mix my long-time friend Finn. Being the gregarious sort, and viewed by some as being a bit unconventional, he counted among his large circle of friends a lot of female athletes. Though I already had a continuing, yet nascent, appreciation of women sports, it’s through the catalyst of Finn’s enthusiasm that I fully embraced this aspect of athletics as well. By the time I was an upperclassman in high school, I think I was a fan and friend of many, if not most, of the female athletes at our school.

And then came Maryland Women’s Basketball. I watched them, I cheered them, I photographed them, and I played against them. If I didn’t respect them before, that last item certainly taught me a thing or two. Having played on the blacktops in the DC area for most of my life, I thought I was an OK player. Then I played against the women. I’ll never forget my introduction. Even though I’m just 5’9″ (175cm) and usually played point or the two, I was posted up against the team’s 6’1″ (185cm) F/C. I thought I had good post position at the low block, but then she threw a hip and not only knocked me out of my spot, she knocked me halfway to Pennsylvania. So, I immediately learned humility and respect. (Side note: when I went back to playing the guys, they got pissed because I was playing too rough. Too funny. I tried to explain to them that I was just playing like a girl :-)

But while the playing was fun, it was all the rest of it that guaranteed that my heart would forever be with the program. I spent a couple of years photographing the team (and other area teams at times), a year as the first student representative of the team’s booster club, and most of my college career as being involved in the program in general. After all of that, how could I not be a major women’s basketball fan now?

(Another side note: I may be a major fan, but I’m also a Terrapin through and through. Even when UNM was consistently a top-25 team, I simply couldn’t go watch them in person. That’s my brother’s school, not mine.)

I felt vindicated in my loyalty during Maryland’s championship run in the 2006 NCAA tournament. The regional semis and finals were held here at the Pit (a/k/a UNM University Arena). Of course I was going. And then I found that Terp loyalty extends through the years. I was reunited with the long-time Rebounders (boosters). The Maryland contingent also arranged for me to sit in a better part of the arena than I’d paid for–with the Terp fans. I was again sitting with my own. People would come up and either re-introduce themselves, or make the point to make me feel like a prodigal son. The coup de grace of this reunion happened early, at the first official practice, where I got to talk for a bit with Maryland head coach Brenda Frese, with whom I’d been emailing.

Of course my involvement hasn’t ended with my exodus from Maryland. A few years ago, I was part of a group that was seriously trying to bring a WNBA team to Albuquerque. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me at the time, there was a flurry of back-door politics going on that eventually doomed the effort. Though that effort was ill-fated, I’m still trying to do what I can to help another group bring a WNBA franchise to this town.

OK…so I have a history with women’s basketball. Why do I continue it? Is it just momentum? Not at all. From the beginning, I’ve loved the purity of the game…how it’s NOT overwhelmingly played above the rim. Let’s face it, the game the men play isn’t the game that Naismith invented.

More than that, I came to hate the sense of entitlement that so many male players I casually knew seemed to have — especially in basketball, but some in football, too. Many were incredibly smug and arrogant. Seems that sort of goes along with the possibility of a big paycheck, for I’ve seen it in the big ticket men’s sports rather consistently. Then again, it might have simply been a symptom of the times.

Now the lesser-known men’s sports, as well as the women’s sports… you don’t get that. Sure, maybe a player here or a player there, but it’s not endemic to the sport.

Thing is, women’s basketball should be about ready to explode. I have mixed feelings about that. First off, the women really deserve it. They play at an incredibly high level and don’t disrespect either the fans or the game. On the other hand, if it does break out that means that it’ll price itself out of its core fan base just like every other sport does. WNBA games are now family-friendly events. One of the few professional sports where a family of four can go and enjoy a high level of sport without breaking the budget. You can’t say that of the NBA or NFL (or in Canada, the NHL), or increasingly MLB.

Because of the “we must always do BETTER money-wise than the year before — even if we’re making a profit” mindset of old-school owners, the WNBA may be doomed by its burgeoning popularity to become another rich-man’s toy. Then it’s only a matter of time before a sense of entitlement starts creeping into the rosters. That would be a shame. I can still remember back to when baseball players would sign baseballs for the kiddies for free during practice or warm-ups. Now these millionaires insist on being paid for the honor of their scrawl.

It’s my desire that professional and college women’s basketball can manage its own success. I have hope that the new influx of independent owners into the WNBA will manage to forge its own athletics-business model–one that other sports, men’s sports, would want to emulate.

In the meantime, I’ll keep watching, and tracking, and posting blogs. I love my Terps. I love my womens sports. Mostly, I loves me my women’s basketball.