I was a Big Ten Heretic: I didn’t care about football and men’s basketball. The truth is I’m not much of a fan of football in the first place, and found the crowds heading to Spartan Stadium to be more of a nuisance than anything else. Men’s basketball I could get more enthusiastic about: I enjoy basketball, but for the longest time I associated men’s basketball with a group of elite students whose parents shelled out hundreds of dollars for season tickets. Something I could never be part of.
I went to women’s basketball games. It helped that women’s basketball games were free to attend as a Michigan State student, which removed one barrier for me. But I also got to sit there in awe of the student-athletes at the games. During the games, I would often wonder, “Why don’t more students get excited about this? Why don’t more students realize the female basketball players are just as good as the men?”
This wasn’t news to me. While I was in high school, our girl’s basketball team went to the state tournament, delighting me and one of our art teachers. The art teacher decided to put the game on the radio in the art room so we could all listen as we worked on our still life drawings. I remember feeling this buzz of excitement that made it hard to focus for once during art class, the class that was my moment of stillness and respite in my tumultuous teenage years. But my teacher and I seemed to be the only people who were interested in the game.
Our girls’ basketball team lost, but it ended up being a memory that stayed with me as I attended college basketball games at Michigan State and Marquette: no one really cares about women’s sports. They’re an afterthought, a joke to some men. Even as my dad and I lost our minds as points were scored right as the buzzer sounded at a Marquette versus DePaul game, it hit me that we were sitting in a space the size of my high school gym, as opposed to the men’s team, who played at the same arena as the Milwaukee Bucks.
What happened? I remembered Mia Hamm and the Women’s World Cup team of 1999 vividly and how it inspired me to try soccer — I was terrible. To this day, I remember the soccer Barbie I had whose wind up leg would kick the ball once you pushed a button on Barbie’s back. What happened to what seemed cool when I was a kid?
I have multiple friends who enjoy women’s sports, although it might help that as I’ve moved away from being surrounded by theater people who go “lol sportsball,” I actually found people I have things in common with. I’m also incredibly gay, which might also attract certain people to me, and queer women really love our professional women’s sports.
But I have straight friends, male and female, who love women’s soccer and also go to as many Chicago Sky games as possible. It never seems performative from them. When they post they got the latest Women’s World Cup jersey, it’s because they love that roster and the design of the jersey. When they share photos from the Sky’s games, I can tell from their posts it’s because they really love the Sky as a team and what it means to Chicago.
It still felt a bit like my collective of misfits that are my friends. Then things shifted last year.
People at work started talking about the NCAA Women’s Tournament. It manifested in many forms. Maybe it was someone talking about seeing Kim Mulkey’s courtside outfits on their TikTok feed, maybe it was people getting excited about Marquette’s women’s team, or maybe it was people checking out this Caitlin Clark. But it seemed like the first year I really heard co-workers, people outside of my inner circle talking about the NCAA Women’s Tournament.
And then it continued.
My grandmother, a German immigrant who is now in her 80s, loves basketball. She fell in love with the sport while living in Milwaukee and seeing the Bucks during the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar era. She is, to this day, still a fan of the Bucks, but in general loves basketball. We talk about once a month, usually on Sundays after she goes to Mass, and catch up about what is going on in our lives. One day, we were talking and she asked me in her thick German accent:
“Have you heard of this Caitlin Clark?”
I got excited. After years of watching women’s basketball and attending women’s college basketball games, my grandmother and I could talk about that specific area of the sport. We could talk about the technical skills of Clark as she plays on Iowa’s team — when your Oma has been watching a sport for about 50 years, she really has picked up on things. I felt this thrill deep inside of me I rarely feel with my family.
This seemed like a momentum that continued. Once the NCAA Women’s Tournament began this year, records began to be broken. Multiple games shattered records and the women’s championship game was the most watched basketball game, professional or college, since 2019. It became clear that people woke up and realized women can play the game as well, if not better than the men.
The WNBA draft has now occurred and Clark has been drafted by the Indiana Fever, which many of us saw coming months ago. The Chicago Sky drafted LSU’s Angel Reese and South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso, and I assure you Chicago will not shut up about drafting two players from the last two NCAA Women’s Championship teams for years to come. Games where the Sky are playing the Fever have tickets going for astronomical prices.
The public is excited for women’s sports. Where do we go from here? Do we start putting women’s sports on prime time? Do we start putting women in bigger stadiums? The Sky games against the Fever are being called to be moved to the United Center, instead of the arena where DePaul plays its games. The most important first step would seem to be equal pay for female professional athletes, given this issue keeps cropping up. But riding the momentum and seeing celebrities show up for female athletes, especially when they’re legends like Shaquille O’Neal, is also a great start. It feels like a a bit of a flood helping break down those gates that have been keeping women’s sports hidden and underappreciated.
My partner and I went to the home opener of the Chicago Red Stars, the women’s soccer team. As I sat there, I noticed it was the most fun I had at a sporting event since I had attended a Habs game in Brooklyn, and I was able to just be present because everyone else there was also so excited to see the Red Stars and the Seattle Reign in action.
At the game, they announced they broke a record for attendance. I then proceeded to yell, “WOMEN’S SPORTS ARE GOOD,” which was uncharacteristically bold of me, and not something I immediately regretted. The others surrounding me then nodded, with looks of “Fuckin’ A” on their faces.
Women’s sports are good. They always have been.
Welcome. There’s plenty of room on this bandwagon.