A tale of two ballplayers
Both persevere through the spotlight's warm glare
It’s not too often you get guys at the bar talking about women’s sports. But this is an unusual time.
It’s 2024, and it’s Caitlin Clark’s time to shine.
During a Saturday night meal at my favorite local establishment, a friend told me that basketball color commentator Gus Johnson compared Ms. Clark to NBA stars Steph Curry and the late Pete Maravich.
My response was immediate, and visceral.
"Gus Johnson is full of it!” I said, but I didn’t say “it.” Actually, Johnson’s pretty good — definitely not as big a loudmouth as Dan Dakich, who I swear to God sounds like he’s never been west of Indiana.
”Oooo, tell us how you really feel!” the friend said.
”She's Babe Ruth!" I said.
Some may consider that an exaggeration. But her impact transcends statistics. She’s a transformational player, elevating interest in all women's sports, becoming a role model for young girls. If you have a daughter, you know what I’m talking about.
It’s also an affirmation for any grown women who ever participated in sports at any level. I wish my mom, who played girls basketball for the Garrison, Iowa High School Rockets before World War II, was still around to see this.
This is exactly what University of Iowa women’s athletics director Dr. Christine Grant was hoping for when she brought Coach C. Vivian Stringer to Iowa City more than 40 years ago and made the Hawkeyes a national power in short order with stars like Michelle "Ice" Edwards and Toni Foster. This loyal Cyclone saw a lot of Hawkeye women’s basketball in those days with my then-wife and in-laws. Even now-retired Coach Stringer told The New York Times she’s tried to step away from the game but can’t help but watch Ms. Clark.
That said, we're hearing from the critics who are calling Ms. Clark a gunner, that she's not as good as the great players who came before her, etc., etc. I would submit her assist numbers belie the first assertion. Case in point: Hannah Stuelke's 48 points for Iowa vs. Penn State during this past regular season, and Ms. Clark recently setting an all-time WNBA single-game record with 19 assists.
Ms. Clark's success will only draw greater attention to the history of women's basketball and to the considerable talent of her peers. The attendance and attention given to last week’s game between the WNBA all-star team and the U.S. national team, with many past greats in attendance, is a testimonial to all of them,
Hopefully that will include renewed appreciation for Coach Stringer and her outstanding Hawkeye athletes who preceded Ms. Clark and deserve to be remembered. They were mostly women of color and played to largely empty houses, unless it was against then-conference archrival Ohio State or in postseason play.
The Hawks fought to make a name for themselves alongside national powers like Tennessee, Connecticut, Stanford and Louisiana Tech. But it was those Iowa teams, and that coach, which inspired and set the standard for excellence for teams to follow. The best testimonial to that inspiration was the Girl Scouts then who presented the colors at the start of every home game and who packed the Hawk’s Nest at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, especially when the Buckeyes were in town.
Then there’s the knock that Clark never won a national championship — even though the college legend she passed in NCAA Division I scoring, Pete Maravich, never made it past the NIT playing for LSU and never played on an NBA championship team despite being a five-time all-star. It used to be making the Final Four was an accomplishment, let alone the national championship game two years in a row.
Ms. Clark and the Hawks had setbacks and handled them admirably. Ms. Clark is now weathering the ups and downs of being a WNBA rookie in what is, to the enlightenment of many, a very, very tough and physical league.
Which brings us to the subject of great players who have gone before No. 22. I think it’s safe to say no women’s basketball player has attracted this much attention since some much more unfortunate circumstances a couple of years ago.
Two years ago, Brittney Griner, the Baylor college basketball star, two-time Olympic gold medalist and a six-time all-star WNBA sensation with the Phoenix Mercury, was taken into custody by Russian authorities at an airport there for having vape cartridges containing hashish oil, illegal in Russia. She had less than a gram of the oil in her possession. She had played offseason international ball for a team in Russia the past several years.
She was sentenced to nine years in a labor camp. and served nine months in custody before being freed in a prisoner exchange. She and her wife back in the States pleaded for leniency.
Coincidentally or not, her arrest was a week before the outbreak of war in Ukraine, in which Russian troops continued the invasion they began in 2014 with purpose of wiping out and annexing the Ukranian state into Russia. The U.S. and other Western nations have been aiding Ukraine. Griner suggested she was being used as a political pawn.
Support for Griner’s plight was mixed. Some folks indicated she should have known the rules. Some folks who supported the 6-9 married Black lesbian were ridiculed as being “woke.” Still other critics cited Griner’s refusal to come out of the Mercury locker room for the playing of the national anthem, and said a Marine being held should have been traded for ahead of Griner. But U.S officials said they weren’t afforded that choice; it was Griner or nobody.
All of these arguments seem to deter attention from the fact that an American citizen was unjustly detained, tried and given a sentence that far outstripped the severity of the alleged crime. The timing, concurrent with the Ukraine war, was at least curious, if not suspicious.
Griner’s arrest and detention is not an isolated incident in Russia.
Last week, a Russian court sentenced Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in prison on espionage charges. He is accused of spying for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency on a tank production and repair facility in the Ural Mountains. He has denied all charges. The U.S. says he’s wrongfully detained and is seeking his release through diplomatic channels. The sentence was rendered after a year of court proceedings.
On Feb. 22, Russian police arrested Russian-American ballerina and Los Angeles spa esthetician Ksenia Karelina on charges of treason after she donated $50 to a Ukrainian relief agency.
Russian authorities also said she had attended pro-Ukraine events in the U.S. and accused her of trying to raise money for the Ukrainian military and writing pro-Ukraine posts on social media.
She has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Russia and was back in Russia visiting family. She faces a 20-year sentence. Her trial began June 20, was adjourned and her next hearing in that case will be Aug. 7. By then she will have been in Russian custody almost six months.
Gershkovich and Karelina are among the dozen Americans, and 30 individuals in all of different nationalities, being held in Russia on various charges, including espionage.
Other individuals with dual Russia/U.S. citizenship are being detained, and U.S. officials say these incidents underscore the dangers of Americans going to Russia during this time.
Such incidents and the death in captivity of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, against the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine war, should make clear that Ms. Griner was not the issue. The issue is a regime led by a neo-Stalinist totalitarian leader, Vladimir Putin, bent on restoring the Soviet empire he once served as an agent of the KGB.
Maybe in our adulation of the incredible Caitlin Clark, we can also find some iota of sympathy for a woman who is now reunited with her spouse and grateful for every day she’s back in the U.S. She was the WNBA’s comeback player of the year last season and Baylor retired her number in an emotional ceremony. She now comes out of the locker room and stands for the national anthem.
And she will be representing our country once again as a member of the U.S. women’s basketball team at the Summer Olympics in Paris.
Comeback indeed. Welcome home, Ms. Griner.
She also has encouraged Caitlin Clark. She congratulated her on her college scoring record and has welcomed her into the WNBA, while being honest about how tough the league is, speaking from experience. As a coach would. Each in their own way has weathered a lot of public scrutiny and criticism and remained focused as athletes and competitors while retaining their poise as individuals.
Ms. Clark has a vast future in front of her and it’s looking bright indeed. I hope to see her also representing our country in the future. According to veteran sportswriter Christine Brennan, she is admired worldwide as well as in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the Olympics officially start Friday and run through Aug. 11. I know who I’ll be rooting for to be standing on the medals platform.
Ernest Hemingway defined courage as “grace under pressure.” Both of these women have demonstrated that quality in abundance. They exemplify it.
I took my daughter to a lot of University of Northern Iowa volleyball games when she was very little. Former UNI standout player Bobbi Becker Petersen had just become head coach and still is. She read a poem at a Waterloo Rotary Club meeting I attended back then and she graciously shared a copy with me to share with my daughter. I am unaware of the authorship but I think it’s worth sharing here, and always. Here it is:
To Any Athlete
“There are little eyes upon you
”And they’re watching night and day
”There are little ears that quicky
”Take in every word you say.
”There are little hands all eager
”To do anything you do
”And a little girl who’s dreaming
”Of the day she’ll be like you.
”You’re the little girl’s idol.
”You’re the wisest of the wise;
”In her little mind about you
”No suspicions ever rise.
”She believes in you devoutly,
”Holds all that you say and do;
”She will say and do, in your way
”When she grows up just like you,
”There’s a wide-eyed little girl
”Who believes you’re always right;
”And her ears are always open,
And she watches day and night.
”You are setting an example,
”Every day in all you do;
”For the little girl who’s waiting
”To grow up just like you.”
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. Click on their links below to sample their work.
The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative
Good piece. BG paid her price for being an unrepentant US cynic.
I’d highly recommend BG’s new memoir, “Coming Home.” It’s a harrowing story about her arrest and confinement. People I know in the sports world have always described her with words like “sweet” and “kind” and her story exudes those qualities even though its subject matter is so dark. Anyone who can’t summon empathy and kind thoughts for her needs to reset their soul.