I expect that this thread has been seen before, but not since I have begun reading the Boneyard.
I have been a sports fan for all my life. I first followed baseball by listening to WMGM out of New York for games of my beloved Brooklyn Dodgers and with Red Barber describing the action. Football and basketball came later. My brother took me to a number of Trinity College football games in the 1950s and several baseball ones (saw Moe Drabowski as a freshman) and I remember listening to Chris Schenkel’s broadcasts of the football New York Giants. He was such a homer that I reacted by becoming a Cleveland Browns fan at the time Otto Graham was the quarterback. Attended a number of football, basketball, and baseball games at college, together with an occasional hockey one. I saw Heisman Trophy winner Pete Dawkins playing on the Army hockey team. While in grad school in the 1960s, I went to a number of UConn basketball games at the old Field House. The Dream Season and first national championship in 1999 stand out, particularly since the Huskies defeated hated Duke to win it all.
As mentioned in my initial post, I first became acquainted with the women’s team in the fall of 1994 when a student worker told me that the team should be real good that season. I attended around a dozen games in 1994-95 sitting in the general admission student section behind the home basket. At the time, one could walk up to the ticket office a few days before the game and pick up a ticket for a nominal price. Included was the monumental win over Tennessee on Martin Luther King Day in January 2016. One of the last games my wife and I attended was Geno’s 1000th victory in 2017. We attended the 1995 Regionals at Gampel Pavilion, a tromping of Alabama and a hard fought victory over Virginia. In the latter game, UConn got off to a ten point lead in the first half and then fell apart and UVa was up by around five points at half time. Everyone in the stands was in a state of shock. Have t-shirts from the 1994 Super Show and 1995 national championship.
My family and I attended the huge rally in Gampel on Monday after they returned home from Minneapolis. What a team! Four present and future All-Americans. The team had it all - outstanding inside play, good guards, excellent shooting, and good defense. The featured players - Rebecca Lobo, Kara Wolters, Jen Rizzotti, Nykesha Sales, Pam Webber, Jamelle Elliott (pound for pound the toughest player on the floor), and Carla Berube. The team was put together before UConn had much of a national reputation and all the players came from the northeast. Elliott from DC was probably the player who came the farthest to join the team. After the core seven, the bench was composed of Missy Rose, Kelley Hunt, Kim Better, Jill Gelfenbien, and Brenda Marquis. The last five came into the game after Geno decided to call off the dogs and they seem to have performed better than the benches in recent seasons. I remember a woman I knew who was not a basketball fan telling me that she burst into tears after the victory over Tennessee. The 1995 victory supplied much of the initiative for the passing UConn 2000 by the General Assembly.
UConn has had a number of great teams but this was the first and the most memorable.
I have been a sports fan for all my life. I first followed baseball by listening to WMGM out of New York for games of my beloved Brooklyn Dodgers and with Red Barber describing the action. Football and basketball came later. My brother took me to a number of Trinity College football games in the 1950s and several baseball ones (saw Moe Drabowski as a freshman) and I remember listening to Chris Schenkel’s broadcasts of the football New York Giants. He was such a homer that I reacted by becoming a Cleveland Browns fan at the time Otto Graham was the quarterback. Attended a number of football, basketball, and baseball games at college, together with an occasional hockey one. I saw Heisman Trophy winner Pete Dawkins playing on the Army hockey team. While in grad school in the 1960s, I went to a number of UConn basketball games at the old Field House. The Dream Season and first national championship in 1999 stand out, particularly since the Huskies defeated hated Duke to win it all.
As mentioned in my initial post, I first became acquainted with the women’s team in the fall of 1994 when a student worker told me that the team should be real good that season. I attended around a dozen games in 1994-95 sitting in the general admission student section behind the home basket. At the time, one could walk up to the ticket office a few days before the game and pick up a ticket for a nominal price. Included was the monumental win over Tennessee on Martin Luther King Day in January 2016. One of the last games my wife and I attended was Geno’s 1000th victory in 2017. We attended the 1995 Regionals at Gampel Pavilion, a tromping of Alabama and a hard fought victory over Virginia. In the latter game, UConn got off to a ten point lead in the first half and then fell apart and UVa was up by around five points at half time. Everyone in the stands was in a state of shock. Have t-shirts from the 1994 Super Show and 1995 national championship.
My family and I attended the huge rally in Gampel on Monday after they returned home from Minneapolis. What a team! Four present and future All-Americans. The team had it all - outstanding inside play, good guards, excellent shooting, and good defense. The featured players - Rebecca Lobo, Kara Wolters, Jen Rizzotti, Nykesha Sales, Pam Webber, Jamelle Elliott (pound for pound the toughest player on the floor), and Carla Berube. The team was put together before UConn had much of a national reputation and all the players came from the northeast. Elliott from DC was probably the player who came the farthest to join the team. After the core seven, the bench was composed of Missy Rose, Kelley Hunt, Kim Better, Jill Gelfenbien, and Brenda Marquis. The last five came into the game after Geno decided to call off the dogs and they seem to have performed better than the benches in recent seasons. I remember a woman I knew who was not a basketball fan telling me that she burst into tears after the victory over Tennessee. The 1995 victory supplied much of the initiative for the passing UConn 2000 by the General Assembly.
UConn has had a number of great teams but this was the first and the most memorable.
That casual, social fandom followed until I graduated in 2011.
