FROM GAMES TO GLORY

The transportation system was a mess. The computers churned out inaccurate results. Commercialism was overwhelming. A bomb explosion killed a woman and injured 110 people.

From a logistical and artistic perspective, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics were a nightmare in many ways. But for female athletes in team sports, the Games were the realization of a dream.

While the U.S. men’s basketball team was criticized for its arrogance and lack of interest while routing opponents, the U.S. women’s team won raves for its grace and graciousness in winning the gold medal.

The women’s soccer team, nearly ignored by NBC in the sport’s Olympic debut, captured hearts and audiences through its skill and its rapport with fans. Its dramatic 2-1 victory over China in the gold-medal game was played before a screaming crowd of 76,481.

The U.S. softball team overcame a freaky preliminary-round loss to Australia to defeat China for the first Olympic gold medal in the sport, winning admirers for its grit.

“Atlanta was the first time we saw the U.S. embrace strong teams of women athletes,” said Sandy Bailey, managing editor of Sports Illustrated for Women, whose 1997 test issue was timed to capitalize on the Olympians’ feats.

“Not to take anything away from the guys, but people were used to seeing male athletes do well and were used to seeing women do well individually. But the women’s success in soccer, softball and basketball was different. In basketball, the U.S. women were much more a Dream Team than the men, who were busy elbowing Angolans. It was a feel-good story.”

It has been more enduring than that. Thanks to the women’s splendid showing at Atlanta, daughters of Title IX--the 1972 federal mandate that prohibited gender discrimination in education programs receiving federal funds--now play in leagues of their own.

Atlanta was the incubator for the 1997 birth of two women’s professional basketball leagues, the WNBA and the late American Basketball League.

The warm reception for women’s soccer told organizers of the 1999 Women’s World Cup that kids and families were there to be wooed. The result was a memorable tournament that drew 650,000. The Women’s World Cup, in turn, was the springboard for the Women’s United Soccer Assn., an eight-team professional league scheduled to start in April.

“If we didn’t see the success they had in Atlanta, both on the field and in the stadiums with big crowds, I’m not sure we would have been so bold as to put the World Cup in major stadiums,” said Marla Messing, president and chief executive of the Women’s World Cup organizing committee. “The success of the Olympics helped us create a blueprint. In 1996, FIFA [soccer’s world governing body] was mandating the use of small stadiums on the East Coast. The World Cup could never have been the breakthrough it was without the Atlanta Olympics.”

Tony DiCicco, coach of the U.S. Olympic and World Cup teams and acting commissioner of the WUSA, believes audiences of all ages responded because the team was entertaining, maintained “the purity of sport” and gave young girls new role models.

“Atlanta was a wonderful event,” he said. “It awakened in Americans what they love about sport: aggression, talent, a blue-collar work ethic. They were fair but tough, and they won. That’s another thing Americans want to see--a winner. They like the villain-and-hero story.

“The women’s national soccer team, the basketball team and the softball team all epitomized that. People brought their families and younger siblings. It was males and females enjoying the same thing.”

The Women’s Pro Softball League, also born in 1997, plans to expand from four teams to eight or 12 by 2004.

“In 1996 there was a new dawning of women’s sports,” said Richard Levine, the WPSL’s executive vice president of marketing and operations. “There were always outstanding female athletes in individual sports, but the sea change is really about women and team sports.”

A record 3,513 female competitors participated in the Atlanta Games, 34.1% of all athletes. Those numbers may increase in Sydney, where women’s pole vault, modern pentathlon, synchronized springboard and platform diving, triathlon, trampoline, taekwondo, water polo and weightlifting will make their Olympic debuts.

Aware that women athletes are a hot property, NBC and its cable networks plan extensive coverage of women’s sports in Sydney. They may have several stories to latch onto: The U.S. softball team and basketball teams are favored to repeat, the women’s water polo team is a medal contender, and the soccer team is expected to vie for gold with China and Norway.

1996 was widely described as the year of the woman, but the 2000 Sydney Games may start the century of the woman in sports.

“Not to imply women are the moral gatekeepers of society,” Bailey said, “but it’s a good time to have a group of athletes on the field that embodies the spirit of sports, rather than a bunch of guys who finish the game and jump into a limo after telling kids who are waiting for their autograph, ‘I’m not paid to sign that autograph.’ ”

Said Donna deVarona, a two-time Olympic swimming gold medalist and advocate of women’s sports, “Women, as pioneering athletes in the Olympics, have always held their own. This Olympics will highlight women in team sports. 1996 was a leaping-off point for so many things.”

The WNBA, created and supported by the NBA, is the best-known women’s league. Its access to the NBA’s financial and marketing resources helped it kill the ABL, which had superior talent, and gain sponsors and exposure on NBC, ESPN and Lifetime.

Before launching the WNBA, NBA executives analyzed the growth of women’s college basketball and girls’ participation in sports, which has zoomed from one in 27 at the high school level in 1972 to one in two. The attention focused by influential East Coast media on the undefeated Connecticut women’s team of 1994-95 also indicated to NBA executives that an audience existed for the women’s game. That was reinforced by the positive reaction during a 1995 tour by the U.S. women’s national team.

“We played a lot of college teams and we’d hear fans say, ‘We’re going to beat you guys,’ ” said Lisa Leslie, a 1996 and 2000 Olympian who plays for the Sparks. “People thought there wasn’t a level above college basketball for women. People didn’t realize that when you get to be 27 or 28, you get better. They recognized that all over the country when we toured, and again in Atlanta. The Olympics were a great platform for us.”

WNBA President Val Ackerman said the league’s arena audience is about 75% female, and 20% are under 18. The TV audience is evenly split between men and women. The league aims its promotions toward young girls--future players and ticket buyers.

“We’re trying to develop a lifelong mentality about women’s basketball,” she said. “For older fans, women in particular, there’s a pent-up demand for this. They may never have seen a professional basketball game, but they’ll go to WNBA games. In the case of men who have historically been fans, we hope they’ll support this because it’s a great game.

“One way to win fans is the dads-and-daughters connection. I went to a [New York] Liberty game with two college friends. One had played football and the other was a wrestler. On their own, it was unlikely they would have gone to a game, but I had tickets and they went with me. Each has a few kids and each was there with his daughter, for whom this was huge. You could see the opportunity for these men to have a bonding opportunity with their daughters.”

Despite being backed by the NBA’s marketing muscle, the WNBA has experienced growing pains. Its expansion from eight teams that each played 28 games in 1997 to 16 teams that each played 32 games this season might have thinned talent, and attendance fell to an average of 9,040 a game after peaking at 10,869 in 1998. Ackerman attributed the decline to having started the season early, while schools were in session. The change was made to allow players to compete in Sydney, but it cut into the family-heavy audience.

“It’s much more challenging to sell a sport year in and year out than a one-shot event,” she said. “We’ll learn. We’ll make adjustments. The fact we were able to draw 9- or 10,000 a game is great. This year we drew 2.3 million people. The network TV ratings held at a time most are declining. . . . There’s no platform like the Olympics. It’s a global sports event in terms of generating stars and story lines, and I hope we can benefit from that and some momentum will come out of that which we can parlay into growth for our league.”

The WUSA hopes for the same boost. It has name recognition--every member of the 1999 U.S. Women’s World Cup team will participate--and it has solid financial footing with owners that include media conglomerates Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications. Turner and CNN-SI will televise 88 games over four years.

Teams will play 10 or 12 home games, fewer than in the WNBA but still a psychological leap from buying tickets to a World Cup game or two. The enthusiasm and crowds generated by the 1994 men’s World Cup haven’t lasted in Major League Soccer, and soccer’s popularity as a participatory sport has never been translated into long-term success as a spectator sport.

“That’s going to be a real challenge,” said DeVarona, who chaired the Women’s World Cup organizing committee. “I think the fans are there, but the challenge is that you don’t have the infrastructure already there, which the WNBA had.”

DiCicco knows it won’t be easy.

“Americans love an event, and now, you don’t sell just one event,” he said. “We’re selling a league and players. We’re selling those players people have watched the last few years. When Mia Hamm [who was assigned to Washington] goes to Atlanta and plays against Briana Scurry, there’s a great story line. Will the hero of the Women’s World Cup stop the greatest scoring machine in history?

“It’s a different sell, but there are a lot of similarities. We know we can sell one game. We’re looking to sell the league over time. . . . The whole concept of the league is to sell power and femininity. A lot of people don’t think athletics is femininity, but that’s old thinking and it’s changing.”

Bailey believes the WUSA’s timing may be right.

“If any of these leagues succeeds besides the WNBA, which has [NBA Commissioner] David Stern’s money behind it, soccer would,” she said. “Soccer and basketball are the two biggest participation sports for college- and high school-aged women. The whole Mia Hamm idolization thing will carry it a long way.”

The WPSL, whose season runs from May through August, scaled back from six to four teams and suspended league play to form an all-star team that played the U.S. national team at sites around the country. Playing in stadiums that seat 3,000-5,000, the women have drawn near-sellouts. Telecasts on ESPN2 averaged .5, out-rating NHL and MLS games.

The sport itself has roots: 1,300 NCAA colleges offer fast-pitch softball scholarships to women, and 3.5 million softball players of both sexes are registered with the Amateur Softball Assn. The key is turning players into paying customers.

“There are tremendous competitive forces out there,” Levine said. “The American public has a smorgasbord of sports to choose from.

“One aspect we think we have is that softball is an American staple. It’s a ball-and-bat sport, and everyone is familiar with it. We’re the inheritors, on the women’s side, of the tremendous acceptance baseball has. Soccer doesn’t have it, historically. There are no Babe Ruths of soccer.”

But if women’s professional leagues have no history to promote, they can justifiably claim they’re making history every day, as cultural barriers fall.

“I have four sons,” DiCicco said. “The oldest is 17. He doesn’t know anything other than girls play sports. He always played soccer too. My other sons are the same. To my generation [DiCicco is 52] there’s still, at some level, a novelty about women being out there playing and sweating. But to my sons’ generation it’s normal.”

Bailey took her 13-year-old son Kyle and his friend to a WNBA game, at his request.

“He wanted a basketball. He doesn’t see it as a girls’ basketball, but as a basketball,” she said. “Kids don’t have the same mentality as 40- and 50-year-old guys. When older guys were in high school, women who played sports were looked upon as odd. Now it’s cool for girls and women to play sports.”

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Armstrong Injured

Lance Armstong plans to race at Sydney despite a broken vertebrae in neck. Page 9