January and February afforded high school girl’s and college women’s basketball fans to enjoy their local talents and see Caitlin Clark eclipse not only the women’s scoring record, but the overall college basketball scoring record.
Now we enter March, National Women’s Month, and the women’s collegiate game at all levels will give fans plenty of good basketball to watch more of it is better than ever, frankly.
I had the privilege of PA announcing IU South Bend’s women’s basketball championship tournament run. The athletes I interacted with are collectively talented students chock-full of challenging majors who show promise when they turn in the uniforms and take on a professional career in something other than basketball.
Women in sports have come a long way from the start of Title IX legislation removing barriers based on gender to allow participation in educational, athletic, and career opportunities.
I was a freshman in college in college when the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW, founded 1971) was dissolved, and women’s sports were moved to the NCAA among the same division levels as men’s sports had been for decades.
I first learned about the AIAW when I would read the weekly Ohio State University newspaper, The Lantern.
Iowa – as they are now – was a Big Ten women’s basketball powerhouse, and Ohio State wasn’t beating them back then, but they were usually in the conference title hunt. In the same season Buckeye fans were gearing up for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, AIAW kept popping up in the women’s sports headlines.
Although this was the last of the governing bodies for women’s sports for a few decades before rolling into the NCAA in 1983, participation among athletes was chock full of full-tuition students until the early 1970s.
Can you believe in our lifetimes (among middle-aged folks) the NCAA had no interest in women’s sports? Scholarships were banned for women until 1973.
The NCAA was commercially driven, just as they are now.
The term student athlete, in fact, is even newer than mid-century modern furniture. The two weren’t really used together much until after many of us baby boomers and older Gen X-ers were born.
I digress.
These days there are travel teams, and it’s great to see student athletes from different schools giving shout-outs to their summer, non-scholastic teammates who gather from several other high school programs.
Women’s college basketball is televised on Sunday afternoons, and not just deep into the streaming derivatives offered by ESPN (with variations of “plus” and so on).
My hat goes off to the ladies.
The more I talk to female athletes, the more apparent that – even with increased available scholarships - they’re academically superior even if there is potential to advance in their sports’ professional levels among the top performers in their respective sports.
Young women realize the air is going to be let out of the ball earlier than the ball their male contemporaries are using. They have, as a result, stayed strong in the classroom in realization their education will be the key to gainful employment.
Whether female student athletes are entering a professional sport, or entering the business, healthcare, education, or STEM careers watching last night’s State of The Union response by Alabama Senator Katie Britt further galvanized my belief there is a political group really losing its grasp of what most of the country wants.
How many female student athletes, pro athletes and women in numerous occupations shook their collective head when Senator Britt gave her State of The Union response from…
…a kitchen?
My politics are moderate, and pragmatic, so I consequently catch hell from both sides of the aisle. I trust my first reaction – in my moderate brain - not to be a snowflake reaction.
I couldn’t stop seeing… the kitchen.
Girls, ladies, who – Thursday night - was so far removed from the direction the world is heading than the people who put Senator Britt in this background? They said the quiet part of their agenda out loud.
Beware of a world filled with – nationally at a minority level thank Heaven – people like this who won’t stop at what they’ve done so far to find loopholes to disrupt the advancement of women in all aspects of life.
Female student athletes are earning scholarships, occupational opportunities, and governing positions they deserve.
It took a long time to get access to these things you deserved, and the people behind the “kitchen background” in Senator Britt’s Thursday night response are working in support of some of the same people who want to see many of you take a few more steps backward.
Pay attention to what direction they’re heading versus what direction you want to continue to be heading.
There is a gubernatorial nominee in North Carolina who advanced from Tuesday’s primary election to the November general election who said in so many words - out loud - women should not vote.
Maya Angelou said, “When people tell you who they are, believe them."