Crying through women's March Madness

The contrast between the overdue growth of the game and our current moment

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I cried on Sunday when Paige Bueckers subbed out of the National Championship and burst into tears as she hugged her coach, Geno Auriemma. It was the last college game the UConn star ever played. After a college career plagued by years of global pandemics, injuries, and teammates’ injuries, Bueckers was finally a champion.

And I cried again when I watched this video of it so that I could embed it here.

I think a lot of people cried. That hug was Peak Sports. In it, we saw everything the player and coach sacrificed and went through together to reach the top of the mountain. Anybody who’s ever struggled with something and has half a heart could appreciate and identify with the humanity present in that embrace.

But I didn’t just cry when UConn — the team I root for — won. I cried through the whole tournament. The emotion would come over me suddenly. One moment I’d be fine, sipping one of those new Spindrift sodas on my couch, and the next, my lip would quiver. Random moments caught me off guard, like when, in the Final Four game Connecticut played against UCLA, Bueckers had a crazy assist to grad student Katilyn Chen. Chen yelled and grinned after she made the basket and I felt my eyes well up.

There is something about the confidence and prowess of these young women that just really wrecked me this past month, given the barrage of horrible news coming at me from everywhere else. I’ve always been a sucker for a slo-mo hype video, but I was particularly affected by images of South Carolina’s MiLaysia Fulwiley flexing after she was fouled, or when USC won in the sweet sixteen even though they didn’t have star Juju Watkins. I even cried when UConn freshman phenom Sarah Strong did her cute little two-thumbs-up signature move after the game on ESPN.

I would get weepy during the regular season, too. And this whole newsletter might be corny, so for that I apologize, but I’ve been thinking a lot this year about why women’s college basketball made me so emotional. And it might be because the power and joy of these young women exists in such stark contrast to our current cultural moment.

Women’s basketball — and women’s sports in general — is finally getting the shine it deserves. More people watched the women’s NCAA tournament championship last year than the men’s. Four of the five most-followed March Madness stars on Instagram this year are women. Viewership of the WNBA went up by 170% last year.

This is obviously long overdue. Generation after generation of women have played basketball and not been held in the same regard as male athletes. The WNBA was built on the backs of stars — Tamika Catchings, Cynthia Cooper, Lisa Leslie, Maya Moore, Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, I could go on — who weren’t paid or celebrated enough. Towards the end of her playing career, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley coached in college and played in the WNBA at the same time. WNBA players still make shamefully low salaries. But players know their worth and opted out of the current collective bargaining agreement to renegotiate this season.

The timing of this sport’s surge in popularity gives me a little hope when I need it most. Watching women’s basketball flourish when America just elected a president found liable for sexual abuse feels like stumbling across a bird of paradise growing out of a trash-filled sidewalk in the dead of night.

I think that cognitive dissonance, that glimmer of optimism, is what makes me cry. When I watch basketball after reading articles about how our young boys are being brain-rotted by the manosphere, Kaitlyn Chen’s joy on national television feels radical. While I watch Trump ruin the economy, I’m proud of Bueckers and fellow UConn star Azzi Fudd for making (hopefully a lot) of money on a recent Bose ad.

I don’t know where we go from here. I hope the growth of the game continues, and I hope the country snaps back from its rightward bend towards incels and trad wives. I want these young female athletes to live their adult lives in a country that understands their worth. I want us to be able to pull back from the brink. I don’t know if it we can.

But I do know that I’ll keep watching videos of Paige hugging Geno and Sarah Strong giving the thumbs up. And I know that I’ll stay hopeful, because that’s the most radical thing anyone can do.