San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Women hoopsters keep making history
As NCAA women's basketball teams prepare for March Madness, I'd like to change the name of Women's History Month to Women Making History Month. Why? This past season, two seemingly unbreakable college basketball records have been rewritten by women.
In January, Stanford University women's coach Tara VanDerveer surpassed legendary Duke University men's coach Mike Krzyzewski in total career victories. Then in March, University of Iowa senor Caitlin Clark broke Pete Maravich's 54-year-old large-school career scoring record and Golden State Warriors Stephen Curry's collegiate single-season 3-point mark.
Both records have Alamodome connections. In 2021, San Antonio was scheduled to host the women's championship weekend. Because of COVID, the NCAA decided the preliminary games typically played across the country would instead all be staged in San Antonio.
So instead of hosting only three Final Four games over three days, San Antonio Sports tournament chair Jenny Carnes scrambled to pull off this historic three-week, 63-game event. She assembled hundreds of volunteers (including me) to accommodate the needs of the 64 teams since players and staff were quarantined in the hotels.
Many pretournament articles featured three freshmen standouts who were coming to town: Iowa's Clark, University of Connecticut's Paige Bueckers and Stanford's Cameron Brink.
The Alamodome provided the backdrop for the first national exposure for this trio, who played for the first time to an actual, albeit sparse, crowd that strange COVID season. I had the pleasure of watching Brink's team win a 1-point nailbiter to claim VanDerveer's third career national title.
Now all three are seniors. But because of that COVID year, they have the option of returning for a fifth “super senior” season. Clark announced she is leaving for the WNBA and is projected to be the top pick.
Ironically, some speculate Clark is taking a pay cut from her name, image and likeness, or NIL, collegiate earnings to pull down the league's meager
$74,000 rookie salary. But she will take her multiple sponsorships with her. She's also privileged to claim one of a tiny number of open slots in the 12-team WNBA league.
Because of that scarcity, many female athletes must go overseas to continue their careers. Even some WNBA players play overseas to supplement their comparatively smaller incomes, including Britney Griner, who made her Final Four freshman debut in San
Antonio with Baylor University.
In another overlap of history, the WNBA may not have gotten off the ground without Vanderveer's help, as she took a yearlong leave from her Stanford job to coach the U.S. women's 1996 Olympic team, which reclaimed the gold medal they lost in the previous Olympics. Sacrificing the higher overseas salaries, some players returned home to represent their country.
In 1997, with the NBA's financial backing, the WNBA was born, giving many of those players a professional path.
The women's league has its challenges, but it's beginning to draw the crowds and attention it needs. Perhaps expansion — and more opportunity for the best players — is in the cards.
In my research, I was reminded that Carnes was appropriately named the San Antonio Express-News Sportswoman of the Year in 2021 for her handling of the 2,100-plus arrivals in that COVID “bubble.” Now as San Antonio Sports CEO, she continues to attract these historic championships. The men's Final Four returns next year, and the women will return in 2029.
Who knows what future record breakers might appear next time on the Alamodome court? I can't wait to find out.
Betsy Gerhardt Pasley is a retired corporate communicator from San Antonio. She was one of the first women athletes to earn a Trinity varsity letter, the first female sportswriter at the San Antonio Light, and the author of the book “From the Sidelines to the Headlines: The Legacy of Women’s Sports at Trinity University,” published in 2023 by Trinity University Press.