how you became a fan?

[svetbird]

I thought with all the talk of what we think of the team lately (whether it be like or love right now) and being new(ish) to the board, I would ask when/ and how people fell in love (or like) with this team.
I am most likely a bit different then most of you. As I live in Rochester New York I never had any allegiance to the team. I picked up a book Bird at the Buzzer (about the Uconn and Notre dame battle Diana’s freshman year)a few years ago and at a bookstore going out of business sale. I just fell in love with the players (especially sue and Sveta) as well as Geno. I loved everything about this team, from their recruitment style to the professional way they carry themselves. Any team that has does not promise their players anything except that they will get to play if they work hard, (and then gets those players) makes me love both team and players. I may be a new fan but have read every book I can find on the team (yay Amazon and my surprise autographed Mel Thomas book). I have not missed a game since, and am making plans to come see a game next year!
So what is everyone else’s story

 

[bschwartz]

Sometime around '95 or 96, I wrote to the UConn SID office and said that my parents were big fans even though they couldn't get to many games. Since it was their 25th wedding anniv, could UConn send them a promotional item like a poster or other trinket. What my parents received was a poster autographed by every member of the team along with a congratulatory note signed by Geno. I've been a hardcore fan ever since.

(the poster still stands above pictures of my sister and me in their living room)

 

[Fiftyish]

Great idea for a thread while we anxiously await the game tomorrow night.
I got hooked in 95. Until 93 or 94 I didn't even realize that the women had their own final 4. I happened to catch a championship game on TV in either 93 or 94 and I believe it was UVA that won with twin sisters. Or something like that.
Anyways, in 95 I noticed that UConn was having a great year and after they beat UT at Gampel I was hooked. I used to follow the men's team religuosly but got tired of the one and dones. Women's team is now my passion. Thanks to athe Boneyard I was able to hook up with a corporation that doesn't use all of their primo season tickets and for the past 4 years I have been able to attend many great games.
I consider the BY the most dependable place for up to date information on the team and spend way too much time on it. It's probably not healthy.

 

[svetbird]

Great idea for a thread while we anxiously await the game tomorrow night.
I got hooked in 95. Until 93 or 94 I didn't even realize that the women had their own final 4. I happened to catch a championship game on TV in either 93 or 94 and I believe it was UVA that won with twin sisters. Or something like that.
Anyways, in 95 I noticed that UConn was having a great year and after they beat UT at Gampel I was hooked. I used to follow the men's team religuosly but got tired of the one and dones. Women's team is now my passion. Thanks to athe Boneyard I was able to hook up with a corporation that doesn't use all of their primo season tickets and for the past 4 years I have been able to attend many great games.
I consider the BY the most dependable place for up to date information on the team and spend way too much time on it. It's probably not healthy.

I think they made a movie about those twins. and yes I thought of the topic of fandom as I anxiously await tomorrows game. So glad my gradschool class gets out at 6:40 should get home just for tip off. Will have on my Bird Jersy with my Sveta t-shirt for luck!

 

[katiecrum1992]

I'd always known about the program growing up as a sports fan in California. I remember in middle school watching the last bit of the 2004 championship game vs. Tennessee. I didn't know much about women's college ball but I knew about them obviously. I followed them a little after their last undefeated season up until the loss to Stanford in 2010. Then I moved out the next year right before March Madness and have been a fan since. I was able to go to the game at Stanford when they played there last year. It was amazing and the best Christmas present I've ever gotten.

 

[cannon]

I'm a fan of all women's basketball, so I guess I don't really count or have a back story to tell.

I think they made a movie about those twins. and yes I thought of the topic of fandom as I anxiously await tomorrows game. So glad my gradschool class gets out at 6:40 should get home just for tip off. Will have on my Bird Jersy with my Sveta t-shirt for luck!

Are you talking about the Disney Channel movie "Double Teamed"

 

[svetbird]

I'm a fan of all women's basketball, so I guess I don't really count or have a back story to tell.


Are you talking about the Disney Channel movie "Double Teamed"

yep that is the one. not bad actually.

 

[DaddyChoc]

I remember Bascom's era but I was into "womens basketball" at that time. I was following Tracy Lis career in the late 80's

I recall the 95' parade, I attended... largest parade in Connecticut history (I think).

I locked in during 'kesha Sales yrs. after watching her in HS

 

[arty155]

-Stumbled upon our team on TV in 2009.
-Cheered and yelled all game.
-Googled them that night.
-Stunned to find "The Boneyard"
-Far happier, far less productive member of society ever since.

 

[freekimchee]

Having lived in the Bay Area during the early years of my life, I followed Azzi's career a little bit but didn't really get into WCBB until I started watching more Cardinal games during the Wideman era. I believe it was in '95 when I stumbled upon a nationally televised UCONN game and a smooth freshman guard named Amy Duran caught my attention. I haven't stopped watching the Huskies since.

 

[glenn fisk]

I grew up in Brooklyn and Danielson Connecticut,and was always a fan,but mostly for the men,until I learned two words......Sue Bird.

 

[Shenandoah]

I was a student at UConn, majoring in Sports Medicine. We had to take various "Sports Techniques" courses. One of my choices was basketball, taught by the new women's basketball coach. I really enjoyed the class, and the "professor" had a way to make it fun. We also had to write a paper critiquing one of their games. This was back in the old Field House, and it was just us, the parents, and friends of the players!...Hooked!!!!

 

[cohenzone]

A good friend started going to games when buying women's tickets boosted points for men's seats as well. He told me about them in the Lishness/Bascomb/Pattyson era. They had some radio games I listened to and I was interested. The first NC year sealed the deal. Coincidentally a few years later my wife began teaching in the same school as Rebecca's mom and they became close friends to where we became social friends. We lived through Ruth Ann's cancer struggles. You could see why Rebecca is such a nice and gracious person and pretty representative of the kind of people Geno recruits.

 

[ctfjr]

A good friend started going to games when buying women's tickets boosted points for men's seats as well.

I have pretty much the same story. My friends & I started buying men's season tix when UConn joined the Big East (1980). As I recall by buying women's bb, men's soccer and men's fb season tickets you 'earned' 2 points each. It was less expensive to do that for each sport than donate $100 (X3). I remember going to some of the early women's games in the old fieldhouse - there had to be at least 50 fans there

 

[Scotter]

I was a basketball obsessed 7th grader growing up outside of Chicago thanks largely to the Chicago Bulls. I'd seen the UConn men's team play earlier in the 1995 tournament, and I liked the way that team played with Ray Allen, Donny Marshall, Kevin Ollie, and particularly Doron Sheffer. So I was slightly prepisposed to root for UConn when I started to watch the 1995 Championship game. (Although blue is such a more attractive color than orange, I probably would have rooted for UConn anyway)

I was immediately captivated by UConn by Rizzotti and Geno's charisma. I recognized right away that Lobo was the equivalent of a 6'11" or 7'0" men's player playing outside and making 3-point shots. I could immediately appreciate the skill level. And I quickly recognized that UConn was running the familiar triangle offense that my Bulls had made famous. This was a team that Phil Jackson would love, and Phil Jackson's beliefs about basketball were like the gospel for me at that time. From that game on I've been a fan even if meant only seeing the CBS game and the Final Four in the next few years.

 

[msf22b]

It came gradually to my attention that this was the game of my youth (practiced diligently in the local park and schoolyard) and the game the pros played in the 50's to the early 70's.

I still remember a huge picture of Carl Braun (Knicks) in the NY TImes hurting up from just inside the foul line and executing a finger role identical to the one Maya treated us to these many times.

And Red Holzman's wonderful, flowing offense so reminiscent of Geno's (or the other way around).

It's a wonderful time warp.

 

[RegisteredUconn]

Long time basketball fan though strictly men's until the 1995 season. I also developed an interest in developing team excellence in high school when I discovered one of our coaches (different sport) only lost 17 times in 18 years. Believe it or not, that program got a LOT better after he retired. Geno and his program hooked me with their consistent excellence.

 

[tomcat]

I did not attend UConn, but lived in Connecticut. It was in the 90s, one of the Rizotti years, and I saw the women on TV in a tournament and was impressed Fast forward a couple of years and I was looking for an activity to take my young daughter to, and we started going to games. Soon after, we moved to Massachusetts, so any game became a trip, at least a short one. We went to lots. and went on the road to Rutgers and, on one occasion, to the NCAAs played in Richmond. We moved to Philadelphia, and would drive to games at Rutgers and Villanova. My kid grew up, went away to school, and now my wife and I carry on the tradition when we can. Now that we live in Arizona, the games are few and far between, but we've been to a few.

 

[hoopingcrane]

Kerry Bascom et. al., "In these Girls, Hope is a Muscle", Rebbeca Lobo

 

[ChicagoGG]

We moved to CT in the late fall of '94. Started reading about the team in the Courant, and stumbled on a game on CPTV. We were hooked immediately, thanks to Becca, Riz, Pam, et al.

It was a great time to find such a wonderful team, and we have enjoyed them immensely ever since. Began to get a few tix here and there, and finally was able to become a season tix holder in 2005. Have been ever since!

It took our families a while to understand we were not Yukon fans, but UCONN fans. I have since hooked my brother on women's basketball, and gave him season tix 5 years ago for USF. Now he is an avid season tix holder too, but delusional...thinks one day they will beat us....Nah!

 

[ursusminor]

I remember being about 6 years old, sitting on the floor in front of the TV, chanting "Lobo, Lobo, Lobo!" Would have been around the 94-95 season. Haven't ever looked back.

 

[~*Jen*~]

Short version: I became a fan shortly after enrolling at UConn.

The long version is this: I'm from Michigan. Always been a Wolverines fan, always will be. (LOL, when I lived in Alabama for a few years, my legal plate was related to UConn and I had an M-Go Blue plate on the front of my car. As an aside note, I had to give up the UConn plate when I moved to Iowa. Each spring that I had it, though, we won a national championship of some sort. It makes me wonder if IT was keeping the mojo.)

Okay, so I went to college in Florida. A little DII school without much school spirit. I actually met my husband there. He's from Plainfield and oddly enough, our financial aid counselor was from Connecticut and had UConn stuff on her walls.

Back to the DII thing. I was just SO busy with school and work that I never paid much attention to the goings-on of the DI world. Much like high school, actually. No clue that Tom Brady played for Lloyd Carr at Michigan or anything like that. Didn't know about any of the national championships or win streaks or anything like that at UConn.

When I enrolled at UConn, I'd been through a very tough time. It was taking FAR too long to finish my degree and because I changed my major to something that was SO different from what I had originally studied, it was still going to take forever. I wanted to study as hard as I could and finish as fast as I could and be done with it and move on with my life. School spirit had nothing to do with my life before, so why should now be different?

Then one Saturday night, shortly after we'd started our classes at UConn, I found my husband watching a basketball game. I still really couldn't care less. He told me about the streak. I still didn't care. But then for some reason, I sat. And I watched. And I couldn't believe how GOOD UConn looked. And how amateurish the players at Duke looked. Yep. It was the infamous UConn-Duke game of February 1st, 2003. Duke was supposedly the only team that could stop UConn's win streak.

I barely remember the game itself. Goodness knows, that 10 years ago! (WOW, where does the time go?) But it was around that time that I truly became a Husky. I found my school spirit and for the first time, felt proud to be a member of that community. And it's something I carry with me to this day. And I am raising my sweet girl to be a Husky as well.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

Although not a UConn fan, let me share 2 reasons I became a WBB fan - and 2 reasons why I think folks gravitate to your team:

- The North Carolina Final Four featuring "the shot" - one of the first televised WBB games I saw and one of the most exciting (and I didn't even have a "horse" in the race)
- Getting front row courtside seats for the "1" game that my wife was going to take me to (in lieu of my annual on-strike Hockey game) - that hooked us both being so up close and personal (although front row is not generally my choice - although did sit there for the game we saw in NJ and it brought back memories)

As to UConn:

- Not for nothing, but success (at some level) is absolutely a key ingredient for getting the fan in the door. UConn level success, even better.
- A beautiful style of BB. Yes, I personally can enjoy an RU grind it out just as much, but UConn is a lot prettier to watch. Saw some of Dayton / St. Joeseph's on TV yesterday - another pair of teams that played a very attractive style, although it degenerated as the game went on.

 

[RadyLady]

I am a home grown Connecticut girl and lived not far from the Storrs campus where many members of my family, including my father and my youngest sister attended. As a small girl, I used to hang out at the high school where the intramural basketball games were being played. I remember loving the energy and the play of the game. Sadly, due to my height (5') and a sight impairment, basketball was never in the cards for me as a sport although I was somewhat of a jock, yet I loved the game. In high school I was a cheerleader so I could attend all of the games, home and away - I just couldn't get enough of it - however, I never watched the pro's for some reason.

I attended a music school becoming uber focused on my instrument and lost all sight of everything else until my sisters reminded me that there were other things in life - this after 5 years of school.
And while I was away at school, my dad became a big UConn basketball fan (mens) so he watched that all the time, and somehow he began watching the women as well when Geno came in. He loved Geno's style and "tell it like it is" methods. I was at the house one day when a game came on and I started watching with him...I was hooked. That was a looooong time ago.....

 

[zakalex]

Like many of you I started watching UConn women during the Lobo/Rizzotti era in the mid-90s. Concurrently one of my sons was a student at Harvard and was friendly with many players on the women's team. I started going to the Harvard women's games when they played Yale and knew they were pretty good. I even posted a prediction somewhere (ESPN?) that they would beat Stanford in the opening game of the 1998 NCAA Tournament, which they did. You could hear me screaming in the middle of the night when the game ended on the radio. Anyway, that got me even more fanatical about women's basketball and I started actually attending the UConn games, which I still do whenever possible though Gampel is a trek. Be nice if they played in New Haven