Anyone who has ever won a big game recognizes this look and knows this feelingI spent the last two nights watching the final game of the men's and women's NCAA Tournament. I have to admit to the fact that I have never been a women's hoops fan. I played myself in high school but have always dismissed the women's game as being slower, duller, and generally just far less fun to watch. I have always been a little ashamed to confess that, but there it is. But this Final Four felt different and was certainly more entertaining. Baylor's dominance, the guard play of Skylar Diggins and Odyssey Sims, Stanford's suffocating defense and intelligent team-play, and yes, the 6'8" Brittney Griner affecting every aspect of every game, grabbed me. Baylor is the best team in a game that suddenly has a plethora of very good teams; and yet Twitter, Facebook, and even the opposing coaches, are full of comments about Griner being "manly" "a man" "more of a man than Chris Bosh" and suddenly I have become very protective of a game I have not previously cared about. In a way, it feels like a change in the women's game reminiscent of the change that occurred in women's soccer following the 1996 Olympics, one that I got to witness first hand.
Olympic ticket buying is a tricky business. You have to purchase them months and months before the fact, before you even really know which teams/individuals are qualifying for certain events. My extended family had decided to convene at my aunt's house in Georgia for the games, but the various families were all purchasing their own tickets to whichever events they were interested in. We had decided to all attend one medal event together and I was arguing for a sport that had just been added to the Olympics that year--women's soccer.
My family was not and are not soccer fans. My parents were the ones who brought their books and newspapers to my high school games and clapped whenever someone kicked the ball really far. My extended family was even less familiar with soccer than that. Gymnastics and men's basketball (Dream Team II) were the events that people wanted to attend. No, I said, this is the game to see, the US Women are going to be in the gold medal game and they are going to win. My vehemence coupled with the fact that it was being played 10 minutes from where we were all staying meant that I won, though not without some grumbling from uncles and cousins.
I remember seeing lots of other events during the first week: track and field in the rain the morning after the bombing in Centennial Park in downtown Atlanta, a men's volleyball match that was so unexpectedly exciting my dad and I stood for the last game chanting "Pol-ska, Pol-ska, Pol-ska" with a large contingent of Polish fans dressed in red and waving flags, and a terrible early round women's basketball game. But mostly I searched NBC TV footage in vain for coverage of U.S. Women's Soccer.
The U.S. was playing pretty well in the early pool play rounds, but an unknown team, an unfamiliar sport, the fact that it was Women (which implied less skill and speed), and a small tournament (only eight teams in this initial go at the Olympics), meant that NBC didn't cover the team AT ALL. There were no cameras at the games, no highlights at the end of the night, very little, if any, mention by Bob Costas or the other studio announcers. The World Wide Web was in its infancy, dial up modems were loud and slow and the only thing available, Google was years off. Newspaper box scores were what I used to follow the team as the worked their way to the semi-final game. They were winning and they were invisible. Completely invisible.
My aunt surprised me by buying two tickets on the street for the semi-final games at the Georgia Bulldogs storied football field. (The hedges were removed for the soccer events). We sat and watched China beat Sweden and the U.S. beat Norway in OT for a berth to the gold medal game. There were close to 50,000 screaming yelling crazy awesome fans at the game, but when the two of us got home, ecstatic and drained from a day of intense soccer, no one there knew the results yet. Not only was the game not available anywhere on TV but the results hadn't been announced.
Three days later, with next to no coverage, the United States met China in the first gold medal women's soccer game ever. The streets of Athens were filled with fans. Brianna Scurry, the starting goalkeeper, had been so impressed by the support of fans she promised to run naked through the streets of Athens if the Americans won.* My cousins and I painted flags on our nails, my mom wore a Dr. Suess looking felt hat with red, white, and blue stripes, Chinese fans waved enormous flags and beat drums and ate rice balls they carried into the stadium in their fanny packs.
*Apparently she did run naked through the streets, though she waited until early morning when they were finally empty of fans
The game was incredible. It came down to the very end of regulation. Michelle Akers, the American's star midfielder, was so exhausted that she had to be carried off the field and get an IV in the locker room before the final whistle. The stadium was so loud I remember shouting into my brother's ear and still not being heard. I had to write "sudden death, then PKs" on my hand with a pen from my aunt's purse, to tell him what would happen if it ended in a tie. Finally, Shannon McMillan, who had scored a golden goal against Norway to put them in the final, scored another one, and victory was ours.
The stadium of 76,000+, at that time the largest crowd to ever watch a women's sporting event anywhere in the world, stayed to watch the medal ceremony, the US players running around the field with the flag slapping fans' extended hands, the Chinese players running out to clap and thank their fans and supporters. We got home, drained and elated and excited, and like sports fans everywhere we turned on the TV hoping to relive the event. This time Bob Costas mentioned the gold medal victory and showed some still photos, but because there had been no cameras at the field NBC was not able to offer any video highlights. If you weren't in the stadium in Georgia that night, you didn't see the game.
Hard to imagine now--when even a game being played in Japan at 3am local time is available on ESPN3 on demand or any sports bar can put GOLtv on in a corner for a paying customer to watch Sunderland lose on a Wednesday afternoon to Manchester City. And most sports fans recognize many of the names from that Gold Medal team: Michelle Akers, Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastian, Cindy Parlow, Tiffeny Milbrett, Julie Foudy, Kristine Lilly, Joy Fawcett, Carla Overbeck, and Shannon Macmillan. So in some ways soccer and women's sports have come have a very very long way since NBC ignored them in 1996.
In other ways, not so much. Last night I watched an incredible female athlete, a newly crowned champion, get called a man on national television, instead of simply congratulated for the hard work she put in all season and the physical beating she takes from opponents game in and game out. And last year, when we Foresters traveled to a school with a recently founded women's soccer program, we were not allowed to change or shower in a locker room because the women's locker area was being used to house the visiting football team. And so, we changed into our uniforms in the basement of a dorm while residents did laundry and gave us strange looks, and our post-game showering was done quickly and illicitly amongst football equipment while our teammates held off the teams streaming off the field.
Progress? Yes. Are you we done? No.
