The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘Keeps you humble’
Behind Bueckers, UConn teammates’ ritual of signing autographs
STORRS — Twelve-year-old Calli Sansone of Tolland has Paige Bueckers’ game-day braids and three autographed pictures with the UConn women’s basketball team’s AllAmerican guard.
The goal for her and her 7-year-old brother, Anthony, for the upcoming NCAA Tournament subregional at Gampel Pavilion is to get autographs from Bueckers’ classmates Aaliyah Edwards and Nika Mühl. Third-seeded UConn entertains No. 14 Jackson State Saturday in an NCAA Portland 3 Regional contest with the winner vying for a spot in the Sweet 16 Monday night.
For the 22-year-old Bueckers, the postgame autograph scrums with her and some of her teammates that have followed Huskies’ games at Gampel Pavilion and the XL Center in Hartford this season are ways for her to give back and are a flashback to her days growing up in Minnesota.
“I remember being that little kid at the Lynx games, at the Gopher games, wanting everybody’s autograph and just being that kid that waited outside after the games or waited by the stands and just wanted to interact with the people I was watching,” Bueckers said. “So it’s me just wanting to be the same role model that the people I watched were for me.
“It keeps you humble to see how many people are looking up to you and how many people are watching you and want to fill your shoes one day. It just makes you extremely grateful for all the little things in life. It’s a blessing to be in this position. The more I can interact with the fans and do stuff like that, I’m going to do it. I want to do it. It keeps you humble and keeps you grounded.”
Autograph seekers have
followed the Huskies for three decades, but the crowds have exploded in some ways this season with hundreds and hundreds fans flocking to the corners of the court after every game to get an autograph, a picture, or a selfie with one or more of their favorites. If not for staff pulling them away at times a half hour or so after the final buzzer, they may never get home after a game.
Which is just fine with them.
“It’s the most important part of us being here and playing basketball, people watching us and coming to our games and us being able to inspire the next generation of girls and boys,” Mühl said. “Just seeing the outreach and being able to make somebody’s day and seeing their smile and the way they look at you and the way they look up to you is huge. It has definitely been one of my favorite parts of being here at UConn.
“I feel like we have the best fan base in the nation. It is always good to feel like you’re giving back. It doesn’t always feel like you’re giving something back to them so by doing something like that makes my day, it makes their day. It’s a pretty cool thing. So whenever I can do it, I will. I feel bad sometimes because we are in a rush and can’t go to everybody, but
it’s definitely a cool thing and makes our days.”
Of course, this isn’t happening only at UConn. The Caitlin Clark phenomenon at Iowa has drawn record crowds wherever the reigning national Player of the Year and the Hawkeyes play and record television ratings. Reigning national champion LSU and Angel Reese are another popular draw in person and on television. The two All-Americans are often shown signing autographs for good-sized crowds after they play.
And those are only two examples of how the game is growing on and off the court.
“It’s funny that women’s sports in general and certainly women’s basketball has reached a certain level of attention and appreciation that certainly didn’t exist back in the 80s,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “Men had to buy into it. That was the big thing. Getting guys to buy into it was the big thing. Because women, they don’t do a great job supporting other women athletes playing sports in general. So you had to get the guys to buy in. And they wouldn’t buy in in the beginning.
“Then all of a sudden they started having kids that wanted to play basketball because they saw their idols playing on TV. Once that transformation happened, then it became what it became. I think some dads who would go, ‘I don’t really care about
women’s basketball.’ Then all of sudden, their sevenyear-old really cares about whoever it is on our team that is her idol, now all of a sudden they care.
“Those are the ancillary things that happen when you just think we are here to win games, but actually we created a subculture that didn’t exist. It wasn’t there. Through a lot of people putting hard work into it, a culture was born out of nothing. It is not like it was a sleeping giant just waiting to be woken. It was road kill. There was nothing, less than nothing. The people that were here in the beginning deserve a lot of credit for that. In order for us to appreciate what we have today, we have to really remember what was here, who was here 20-25-30 years ago. Because without appreciating them, you can’t appreciate this.”
Rebecca Lobo remembers the lines around the concourse at Gampel Pavilion her junior year when UConn would hold autograph day. As the Huskies continued to win in 1994, fans would hang around inside and outside following games looking for their favorites.
In 1995 as they made their run to 35-0 and the program’s first national championship, it became crazy at home and a circus on the road. And no one got more attention than Lobo, UConn’s first twotime All-American, national Player of the Year, and — a year after graduation
— Olympic gold medalist.
“It was incredibly important. It was incredibly important to our coaching staff,” Lobo said. “I can remember doing the autograph signings postgame for however long and sometimes the staff would cut them off. It was incredibly important to my mother, actually. My parents would wait for me because we would go out for dinner or whatever. My mom was the one who would say, ‘You’re going to sign every autograph. We’ll wait for you.’
“There was one time my mom pulled me aside because I was signing but not really paying attention or was talking to a teammate and she said, ‘You look everyone in the eye when you sign, especially a little kid, because they’ve waited in line to see you.’ That wasn’t the case our whole time there. We appreciated the fans coming out and wait and support us. After a game you’d be tired or hungry or just want to take a shower, but we understood these people were waiting for us, were here to see us, and we understood that responsibility.”
Lobo, who works as an analyst for ESPN’s coverage of women’s college basketball and the WNBA, loves to see the interaction between the players and their fans.
She recalled how her oldest daughter, Siobhan, had the courage to approach her favorite player
— UConn’s Breanna Stewart — and ask for an autograph. Stewart, the three-time national Player of the Year and four-time Final Four Most Outstanding Player, could not have been more gracious, Lobo added.
“Jen Rizzotti told me how she was at a game, I think LSU and Vanderbilt, and she said that LSU has all their players come out after every away game for 20-30 minutes to sign autographs,” Lobo said. “Angel Reese has an incredible following on the road. It makes me happy that there’s still that kind of access in women’s basketball and that players still do it.”
For those now willing to wait or jostle for position with other fans or children, there’s always eBay or memorabilia sites that sell autographed photos.
That concerns Auriemma, who want the interaction between players and fans to be genuine and not just a way for a parent (who has their children get the autograph) to make money.
“There are always people waiting for them outside the bus,” Auriemma said. “We’re always late getting on the bus or late getting to the airport or whatever, because they want to sign as much as they can. Sometimes we can’t let them.
“People will have 10 things. ‘Sign this. What’s your name? Just sign it.’ You know eBay is where it’s going. So you always
try to put a name to it just to mess with them.”
Bueckers does have an NIL deal with Topps, which — under the Bowman brand — made its first officially-licensed March Madness trading cards available Monday. The cards retail at $139.99 per pack and each pack includes six base cards, one autograph, and one parallel card.
Women’s players included in the set are Bueckers and Edwards, Iowa’s Clark, LSU’s Reese, Hailey Van Lith, and Mikaylah Williams, Stanford’s Cameron Brink, Virginia Tech’s Georgia Amoore, Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo, and Tennessee’s Rickea Jackson.
UConn’s Tristen Newton and Stephon Castle are included in the men’s pack.
But don’t be concerned, UConn fans. If the Huskies beat Jackson State, Bueckers will be signing for her fans and she’ll do it for as long as she’s allowed to.
“I’m never going to be at a point where I’m not going to sign something because you can get it online,” Bueckers said. “I’m going to do in-person interactions. If somebody wants me to do a video for them or if someone sends me a jersey I’m not going to be like, ‘$5 for this or $10 for that.’ People can sign deals with memorabilia places, but having those in-person interactions is so valuable. I’ll do it for free anytime.”