Reflections on a Girl’s Hoop Dreams

She was shooting baskets outdoors on a dirt court, banking shots off a backboard nailed to a telephone pole. This was nearly 20 years ago in a tiny town deep in the southern Rockies. I worked at the time for the San Francisco Examiner, and had been sent across the country with a photographer “in search of America” and similar nonsense. We had been drawn to this particular dot on the map simply by the dateline: San Francisco, Colo.

I do not remember that much about the town, only that there was not much of a town to remember. What stuck was the image of that girl shooting jump shots and layups, dreaming of making it as a big-time basketball player. She told us the number of practice shots she took each day. It was a fantastic number. She talked about her idols, Dr. J., Walton and a few other NBA stars of the time. She also mentioned one woman, a player who had participated in a short-lived professional league.

The result of this encounter was standard journalistic fluff, puffed full of the helium of false optimism. Of course the sharpshooter from San Francisco, Colo., did not make the big-time. Back then there simply was no big-time for female dreamers of hoop dreams to make.

Things are much different today. As one college coach told the Chicago Tribune: “This is an exciting time in women’s basketball. Now little girls can turn on TV and watch women play. They can start relating to women’s basketball role models instead of men. When they go to our camps we always ask: ‘Who’s your favorite player?’ Up to now, almost always it’s been a man.”

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Yes, women’s basketball is exploding. One professional league is up and running. Another starts this summer. Makers of light beer and expensive sneakers--the underwriters of big-time sport--are lined up as sponsors. With great success the USA fielded, and marketed, a female Olympic Dream Team last year. At some colleges the women’s programs now rival those of the men in popularity. The NCAA’s Final Four for women sells out.

The explosion was a long time coming. The fuse was lit way back in 1972 with the adoption of Title IX of the Education Code. It required equal opportunity for women in education and related activities, sports included. And yet, just as civil rights legislation did not ensure overnight integration, Title IX did not bring immediate parity to the playing fields.

Many supporters of male programs have fought it all the way, from the start predicting all sorts of athletic doom: Why, once women started receiving a proportional number of scholarships, juggernauts like Notre Dame might not even be able to carry 10 backup quarterbacks on their traveling squads.

A quarter-century later, Title IX remains a source of controversy. Women complain about uneven, begrudging application; in many cases, they have been forced to sue for their share of athletic turf. In the opposing locker room, male critics describe a heavy-handed Big Government program that in effect has stolen scholarships from wrasslers and pole vaulters and so on.

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Nonetheless, it is difficult to argue with the numbers: In 1971, less than 30,000 women participated in collegiate sports; the number has grown to 110,000-plus. In 1971, 294,015 American girls participated in high school sports. Last season the number was 2.4 million. And most people in the field now will agree that women’s sports are here to stay.

“In some respects,” said Anita DeFrantz, a daughter of Title IX who won a bronze medal in rowing in the 1976 Olympics and now serves on the prestigious International Olympic Committee, “Title IX presents a chance to see a movement come to its successful conclusion in our lifetime.”

Not that mandating opportunity ensured success. The Bud Lights and Nikes of American culture do not gravitate toward women’s basketball because of Title IX. They chase markets and money. They read Q ratings, not educational codes. The more women athletes participated in sport, the more their natural fan base broadened, and the better--and more marketable--their contests became. What Title IX did was light the fuse, prime the pump. The rest was earned, paid for with what coaches like to call sweat equity.

Still, it’s tricky business, this governmental priming of pumps. A prominent example: To hear Ward Connerly and his allies in killing affirmative action tell it, government has no business promoting integration, even in admissions to public colleges. Rather, it must happen only “on the natural.” The pump must somehow prime itself--and too bad for those left behind in the meantime. I would suggest here that the success of women’s sport offers a lesson for these advocates of jungle law, these quashers of dreams, in just how wrong they can be.