I posted this once before, about ten years ago. Time flies!
In the early fall of 1994 my wife attended a local charity auction. On the block fairly late in the evening were two sets of four tickets each to UConn Women’s basketball games. Nobody bid. Finally, just before the tix were whisked away and returned to their donor, my wife raised her hand on a whim. Sold, all eight tickets, for $20.
When she returned home with her trophies, my reaction was a tepid, “That might be fun.” Our daughter, then 13, was even less enthusiastic. She was an outdoors girl, a rider, and a runner who had had bad experiences in Phys. Ed. during the basketball sequence.
Nonetheless, come January, off we went to Storrs, stopping briefly to eat supper and give our daughter and her best friend a little hoops remediation: A basket is two points, behind the line is three, a foul shot is one, and a few other basic basics that partly clarified the combination of confusion and ignorance the two girls had carried with them to the game.
We parked in one of those far-away lots and made our way toward Gampel through a crowd growing denser and denser as we got closer. The girls began to get a little wound up. When we walked through the doors into the light, noise, and excitement, they were speechless. Neither of them had ever seen or heard anything like it. Our seats were good. The team was better. We were stunned by the Huskies’ intensity, speed, and power. We were all hoarse in minutes. I was irrevocably hooked when Jen Rizzotti sprinted diagonally across the floor, dove to the ground and skidded into the corner to rescue a loose ball that a sane person would have considered impossible to reach. My God, I’d never seen anything like these people. They were all in a controlled sort of frenzy that was irresistible. Seton Hall never had a chance.
The girls had been given a pack of player cards when we entered Gampel. Each had a picture on the front and personal information on the back. In a day, both girls knew every pertinent fact about the each player on the roster, from Rebecca Lobo to Jill Gelfenbein. Our daughter spent time reading basketball how-to books. They were ready for Game 2.
They weren’t alone. Our second $10 game turned out to be Tennessee, and everybody in the state was ready for what in retrospect was certainly the defining game in the program’s history. It was like watching the Little Engine That Could get over the crest of the mountain, and it was one of those games in which the crowd seemed to work as hard—and be as exhausted—as the players. And oh, the joy! No wonder we hung around afterwards. Everyone was too drunk with excitement to do anything else. How could we not fall in love with these girls, their crazed coach, and this program?
Our daughter went on to play a lot of basketball, and even to coach middle-school kids while she was in college (teamwork, screens, cuts, and bounce passes!). We’ve all been passionate fans ever since, of course. We eventually would have become fans anyway, but what a lucky, unforgettable introduction!
