As a teenager, myself, and my brother Gary would watch whatever sporting event was being televised that day. We mostly watched professional athletes, sometimes college, occasionally the Olympics, and in rare instances we could stoop as low as Roller Derby. Over the years, though, it was all the New York teams of the 60’s and 70’s that the two of us followed with religious passion. We could name all the players on the Mets, Yankees, Knicks, Nets, Giants, Jets , Rangers, and Islanders (I did not realize, back then then, that the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Braves were New York teams). We never had anything against woman’s sports, we simply had very few opportunities to check any out. Every Saturday morning, I would run to the mailbox to get the ‘TV Guide’. It was literally called “T.V. Guide” and it provided a list of the time and the place of all sporting events that were to be televised during the week. One Saturday way back in the mid-seventies “the guide “said: ‘NCAA Women’s National Championship Game Sunday 12:00’. The next morning, I was up early, ‘Hey Gary, turn on channel two there is a girls basketball game on.’ “What?” he said with surprise. ‘A girls hoop game is on,’ I screamed back. Within minutes we were in front of the boob tube sitting two feet away from our family’s newly purchased 12-inch colored screen. We watched the entirety of the Montclair State Lady Monarchs playing the women Bruins of UCLA in the college national championship semi-finals. What I always remembered from that game was a player nicknamed “Blaze” (Carol Blazejowski). By far she was the most dominant performer on the court that day and made an impression on myself and my brother “She reminds of Pistol Pete Maravich. These girls are much better than I expected,” I said to my brother. The fact turned out to be it would be nearly 50 years before I watched another girl’s game from beginning to end.
Carol Blazejowski went on to be “the Goat” of women’s basketball for a couple of decades. Yet, watching her that day did not catapult myself, or Gary, to becoming much of a rabid fan to the girl’s game. Last spring, by complete accident, somewhere in South Carolina, on a Friday night, the Iowa girls’ basketball team was on ESPN playing LSU for the women’s championship of college basketball. I had heard the typical hype regarding the two stars of the opposing teams as well as being familiar with their superior head coaches (Iowa’s Lisa Bluder and LSU’s Kim Mulkey). I looked up to the screen as the player displaying a large number 22 on her jersey was threading an on the run bounce pass through three defenders. One play is all it took…… ‘maybe this kid is not the usual over bloated talent that sportscasters drum on about at nausea.’ I kept watching, and before halftime I was sure I was witnessing the second coming of Michael Jordan, and her name was Kaitlyn Klark. I watched her that night and many games in the following season. It took me a while to figure out her name was spelled Caitlyn Clark, but only one play to realize it was not a good idea to turn my head when watching her perform. At first, I watched Clark in awe, taking in her game. She had an attitude to go along with a unsufferable competitive spirit. As a former athletic competitor ‘she is not only a great player but a great teammate’, I was thinking. ‘She unselfishly delivers the ball to the open girl. She shoots the ball from deep as good as anybody who played the game.’ On the court Clark is in perpetual motion running off screens and screaming at the officials all in one. She looks as if she is the energizer bunny on steroids, who also happens to have MENSA like basketball I.Q.
In March of 2023, for the first time in decades I watched a women’s basketball game. Iowa University was playing Louisiana State University in the women’s championship game. LSU had a player (Angel Reese), who presented the perfect foe to Clark captivating the crowd with a show of her own. That day back in 2023 LSU, coached by the dynamic fashion plate Kim Mulkey, sent Iowa home without the trophy they would miss out on again in their future. The way Clark and Reese fought in that game brought my mind back to Russell/Chamberlain, Magic/Bird, Frazier/West. One game watching and I couldn’t get enough of Ms. Clark. Last Friday night (April 5, 2024) I settled in to watch Clark pour 41 in the NCAA Women’s National Semi Final tilt. It turned out to be the first time in my recent memory that I was so emotionally tied to a sporting event. My heart was all in with this kid who looked like a number two pencil with an extra 2, surrounded by a band of street brawlers who you’d take to any barfight. This past Sunday, without one penny wagered, it was time to watch Caitlin Clark play her final game of her collegiate career. Iowa had escaped LSU and perennial power University of Connecticut in the earlier rounds and now it was time to face the South Carolina Gamecocks, led by their venerable head coach Dawn Staley. South Carolina had rolled through the season 38-0 and was installed as a 6.5 favorite to beat the Iowa girls.
The magic of sports lies somewhere between our expectations and our dreams. We get behind our favorite players and teams and we pull for them as if we were going into battle. We have no idea what the fight will bring, or how the ride will end. Every now and then someone, or something, rises above the crowd to make you care , they make you root from this place inside that you’re embarrassed to expose. Caitlin Clark got me to that place, one more time, to a place ‘I could not turn my eyes away.’ Caitlin Clark half court bombs, that in my coaching days would have never been tolerated, was what I loved the most. The fact was when Clark was performing, I wanted to watch. A jaded old men’s hoop junkie had suddenly become infatuated with all things women’s college hoops. The last time I remembered caring this much about any game was back when I was playing or coaching. Clark started the last game of her Iowa career putting on a first quarter display that eclipsed the magnitude of the moment. In front of 24 million television viewers, on arguably the biggest stage ever in women’s sport. Clark put up 18 points, broke several records for numbers in a quarter and had her undersized Hawkeyes up 27-20 heading into the second stanza. ‘This girl passes like Cousy, shoots like Curry and leads like Jordan,’ I said to myself getting up from the recliner to take breath.
In the end South Carolina had too much talent and size for the undermanned Iowa team. Led by Kamilla Cardosa, along with a strong bench performance led by several Gamecock freshman, Iowa’s dreams of sending Clark into the sunset with a National Championship faded into an Indiana’s sunset.. The game ended with South Carolina hoisting their second National Title Trophy in three years. The Iowa girls left the stage after their magic carpet ride was officially ended at the crowning ceremony. During the throning of the champion there were both tears of pain, and tears of joy. Both teams had the look of two battered prize fighters awoken up after a fantastical dream had come to an end. After all the talk, and all the hype, Caitlin Clark tore apart the records books, blazing through almost every standard that ever stood, but short one National Championship. Clark and Reese are on their way to the WNBA now. A woman’s league that’s has struggled to find a style, or a fan base to support its growth. The hope is that Clark’s performance during her college career will carry over into the same excitement at the professional level. The day after this year’s women’s final the men’s played their championship game in front of 14,000,000 viewers; 10 million less the girl’s afternoon game the day before. It was clear evidence that suddenly the women were more marketable than the men. This may a temporary phenomenon, but right now American basketball fans have gone wild for the girls.
As Clark’s career ended, I thought back to the young lady whose records she had just shattered, Carol ‘Blaze’ Blazejowski. After “Blaze” finished college in 1978, she ended up playing two years of women’s semi-pro (there was not a professional woman’s league until the WNBA inception in 1996 ) basketball in Allentown Pennsylvania for the Allentown Cressettes. By happenstance, Muhlenberg College in Allentown was where I ended up playing college basketball. In those days, the local college players prepared in the offseason by balling together in the local public courts. One day, some running mates and I got on a Saturday morning roll at Allen Park Center Court. In the fourth game of the day, our opponents were playing with four guys form Moravian College, and one woman. We all knew who she was, and how good she was for a girl. “I got her,” I piped up to my teammates. I remember thinking to myself, ‘I realize I am an average division three basketball player, but there is not a girl on this planet going to have her way with me on a basketball court.’ During the regular season we had the Mo Mo’s number, but in that Saturday Championship game in Allen Park, with a woman as their fifth starter, they beat us 11-9. As I summoned all my powers, to stop her, she dropped five of their 11 points on my red ass. At the time I took a lot of good-natured ragging from my teammates. But, for me it was not a laughing matter. I have never spoke of that day, until now. I was a trash talker win or lose. If only I had known what the future had in store for us.
