Caitlin Clark, Women's Basketball, and Pastoral Identity

some reflections

I am trying to figure out why I am still so emotional about women’s college basketball today, five days after watching Sunday’s NCAA Championship game between South Carolina and Iowa.

Maybe it’s because women’s basketball is somehow woven deeply into who I am, or at least the center of some core memories. As a little girl, my parents brought me to watch the Iowa State women play in Ames. ISU was trying to fill up the seats of Hilton Colosseum by offering cheap tickets, and my dad was an eager alum willing to drive his little family up I-35 to Ames from Des Moines to cheer on the Cyclones.

When we started making the trip, I was two and my sister was four. We wore our little cheerleading outfits and sometimes ate at Hickory Park before the games. (If you know, you know. If you don’t, I’m sorry.) The eternally-long walk into the arena from the parking lot was so cold and dark, and our legs were so small and tired.

But once we’d climbed the hundreds of steps up to the doors of Hilton, we were greeted by a blast of warm air, the sounds of whistles and dribbling, and the promise of a pink and yellow Clone Cone at half time. We witnessed the finesse and grit of the early 2000’s Cyclone basketball legends: Megan Taylor, Brittany Wilkins, Lindsey Wilson, Angie Welle….

On the walk out to the car after the games, if we were lucky, Dad would carry us back to our 1995 Ford Taurus. We’d rest our heads on the backseat cupholder console as we listened to the hoarse sound of Bill Fennelly’s voice on the postgame radio interviews lull us to sleep.

And one year, we even made the trip to Kansas City to watch the Cyclones play in the Big 12 tournament.

I didn’t realize men also played basketball until later in elementary school. I thought it was a women’s sport.

As a girl, I went to the Drake Women’s basketball camp for a few summers, joined a YMCA team with school friends, and eventually played on my school’s 7th and 8th grade teams, too. Basketball for me was fun, exciting, and low-key. I was never the best or the worst player, and I learned the fundamentals and thrill of the game enough to become a life-long fan, especially of the women’s game.

Maybe that’s why I am still so emotional about Sunday’s game today.

When the Hawkeye’s filled Kinnick, Iowa’s football stadium, with a record-breaking 55,000 fans to watch Caitlin Clark and her team last fall, I was floored. I feel connected to her as an Iowan myself, as a girl from Des Moines, and as someone a few steps removed from the greatness of CC22—I know friends of friends of Caitlin Clark from the Des Moines community I grew up in.

It was with utter delight that I witnessed folks in my wider circles join the Caitlin Clark bandwagon, and with it, the women’s basketball bandwagon. People started watching women’s hoops who never had before, recognizing by first hand experience that the women’s game is just as physical, just as beautiful (or more), and just as high-level as the men’s.

Here’s why I think Sunday’s game meant so much for me, and for my evolving pastoral identity as a young woman preacher:

Somewhere, way back in my formation, it seeped into my understanding that boys were more worth watching, more worth listening to, and more worth following. I didn’t consciously choose to believe that, but I did, and I have, and to my own shame, I still continue to let that insidious false belief shape the ways I show up as a preacher and a pastor.

I wonder when it started.

Maybe it was in elementary school when the high school women’s basketball team played at 5:00 and the men played at 7:00, and my little family showed up for the women but the rest of the school showed up when the men’s game started.

Maybe it was the group project when my girlfriends and I carried the load administratively and executively, but the guys in our group won over the class with their winsome presentation of our work.

Caitlin Clark and her team showed the world, especially the world of college basketball fans, that women are worth watching, worth listening to and worth following.

Lots of us already knew that, of course. Women have been playing amazing college basketball for a long time.

But maybe that’s why I’m still emotional about Sunday. It healed a part of me, somehow. Yeah, she changed the game and will forever be the GOAT, but it’s bigger than basketball. The Hawkeye women (and the South Carolina team) showcased on a national stage the capabilities, depth, passion, grit, and athleticism that women bring to the game of basketball. And they also reminded us all that women are worth watching, worth listening to, and worth following.

As a young woman pastor still finding her voice, I needed to experience Sunday’s game. I was going to watch with friends, but I ended up taking it all in on my couch with the dog, tears streaming for the majority of the game. I needed that moment to myself.

And don’t even get me started about the all-women panel of commentators. Something inside of me settled, took a deep breath, and felt relief. Yes and amen to that.