I was on the verge of tears the whole of last weekend, if I'm being honest. But I had a beautiful reason to cry.
Monday morning I woke up at 4:30 a.m. Central Time to make the trek back to Davenport. It was early, but spending my entire weekend in Cleveland, watching the Iowa Hawkeyes change the world of sports was worth every second.
On my way back home I started reflecting on things from the weekend. I knew the number one question was going to be, "What was your favorite part?" Honestly, that's an impossible question to answer. But if I had to, I would say it was the first time I let myself cry: Saturday afternoon.
After a few long days of driving and walking and basketball I was able to attend an open practice for both the South Carolina Gamecocks and the Iowa Hawkeyes. South Carolina took the floor first and I found a seat in the front row, a few feet away from the players.
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When their time was up all players shuffled off the court, waving to the crowd as they went. Then came the event 19,000 people attended for: The Hawkeye show.
Practice is free to the public, but a sold-out arena just for a warm-up is completely unheard of. All around me whispers of, "I have never seen anything like this" came from camera crews and reporters sitting around me.
I, too, had never seen anything like it. And that's why I finally cried for the first time. Because as a kid, this is all I ever would have dreamed of. An opportunity to see it happening.
Right before the tournament I wrote about how I became a basketball fan, but I admittedly left out a few details. For those who didn't read it, the story is simple: I read a book on Lisa Leslie when I was 8 years old and have been a Los Angeles Sparks fan ever since.
What I didn't tell you about was the Christmas where I asked for a tape measure so I could mark where the free-throw line would be on my driveway. Or the Easter when I requested the bunny only bring me chalk so I could draw more basketball courts on said driveway. Free-throw lines, three-point lines, logos and all.
And what I most certainly didn't plan to tell you about was how I would flip laundry baskets upside down, grab a wooden spoon to use as a microphone and stick it in my dad's shoe, my makeshift microphone stand, while I ran my own press conferences.
This past weekend as I sat in press conferences and watched players field questions, I smiled thinking about my own humble conferences where I had to imagine the audience. I realized halfway through I was on the complete other side of the podium, and that's something I never expected.
That was on my mind as I watched the championship game from my perch in the lower bowl, nervously hoping the Hawkeyes could pull off the upset. All around me Hawkeye fans cheered anytime anything went our way, easily drowning out the Carolina fans in attendance.
At one point in the game I overheard another journalist say she felt the crowd was overwhelmingly Iowa fans because the neutral site is closer to their school. It's an eight hours drive from Iowa City to Cleveland. Gamecock fans only had to travel one hour more.
Now if you know me, I'm the last person to give directions. I'm terrible with geography. But even I can look that up on Google Maps.Â
I took that comment to Twitter where a talented, and hilarious, journalist from Northeast Iowa met it with this great quote:
"People don't seem to understand how well Iowans travel for their teams. You could play a game on Mars and if it involves Iowa or Iowa State, those fans will be there and they'll drain that colony of Busch Light or whatever light space lager is available."
I chuckled over the space lager comment the rest of the afternoon, even when I was in the post-game press conference when I was thrown off my game. Out of the sea of male journalists, a 9-year-old girl introduced herself as DJ Lily Jade of 95.5 FM in Cleveland and asked both Caitlin Clark and Kate Martin what advice they had for young girls.
The big smiles on their faces showed this made their day just as much as it did everyone else in the room, and they gave the usual advice: dream big and work hard.
But what caught my attention was the look on Lisa Bluder's face: absolutely bewildered. She looked around as if to make sure everyone else around her was seeing what she was seeing. The old adage is you have to see it to be it.Â
Within minutes of the championship game concluding that was proven to be working.
In that small conference room, 100 feet from the court, Bluder's face softened then turned to pride as she listened to Lily Jade's question. The Hawkeye coach blinked several times as she seemingly fought back tears at the realization that the next generation was already before her eyes.
"You are well on your way, Lily," Bluder told her about her future success. "You're amazing."
The juxtaposition of being the coach leading the most-watched player in women's college hoops to already seeing the pay-off is completely unchartered territory. And we're just getting started.
Friday, before the Hawkeyes faced UConn to advance to the national championship, the Las Vegas Aces announced they were moving their July 2 game against the Indiana Fever to a larger venue.
Sunday, the championship game against the undefeated Gamecocks and the Hawkeyes peaked at 24 million viewers, the most-watched basketball game since 2019 and a 285% increase in viewership from the 2022 women's national championship game.
The following day, a week away from the WNBA draft, the Phoenix Mercury dropped a poster advertising a June 30 game between them and the Indiana Fever.
Now this is monumental for a few reasons: Clark not even been drafted yet, although she is expected to make the move to Indiana as they have first dibs in the draft. While the Aces finished first in the league last year, the Fever were 10th and Mercury 12th out of a dozen teams.
All of this must have caught the attention of WNBA executives, considering the Fever announced on Wednesday 36 of their 40 games would be broadcast on national TV. In 2022, only 22 games made it to the big-screen. Of those, only one was shown on ESPN.
That same night I found myself at lacrosse practice at Crow Creek Park in Bettendorf. I was passing out uniforms and casually tossed the No. 22 jersey to one of my girls. Her mom and I shared a look while we waited for her to realize what she was wearing.
"Do you know who else wears 22?" her mom asked as she pulled it on, adjusting to make sure it fit correctly.
The answer and jaw-drop were simultaneous.
"I'm going to be just like Caitlin Clark!" she said.
As a kid, I had to make my own court and T-shirts. I drew huge logos on my driveway, advertising a team I could only catch if a game just so happened to be broadcast on Saturday mornings. Now, we have 9-year-olds in press conferences. We have arenas fighting for the chance to show women's hoops.
Viewers have proved the value to TV networks that if you, in the words of Clark, "give women's sports a chance, it thrives."
As I sat in that practice on Saturday afternoon, I realized it was a pivotal moment for women's sports. Behind me hundreds of little girls shouted for Clark to look their way, to wave, to smile. She stayed focus and, in her defense, I don't think she could have heard them. It was that loud.
But I thought about how this would have made a difference for me as a kid. I didn't have access to major basketball teams, in-person or on TV. All of that has changed in the last few years, and the proof was all around me in Cleveland.
An 11-year-old from Western Springs, Illinois, held up a sign that said she started playing basketball because of Caitlin Clark. That girl lives 212 miles from Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
Before the game on Friday three sisters, ages 9, 8 and 6, were dressed to the nines with Hawkeye gear. They were from Minneapolis, 302 miles from Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
Ahead of Sunday's championship I found an 11-year old holding a sign reading, "I'm not a Swiftie, I'm a Clarkie." That girl was from Findlay, Ohio, 485 miles from Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
Then, of course, there were the Quad-Cities area kids I met along the way. The ones who dreamed of coming to Cleveland and proudly wore their 22 jerseys and are only an hour drive from the University of Iowa.
But here's what all of this boils down to: Iowa is not known for its women's basketball program. It's a fact Bluder addressed in her own press conference. UConn, Tennessee, Stanford, LSU, South Carolina top the list.
Yet, for 19,000 people in-person Saturday and 24 million watching from home Sunday, it didn't matter. This was not a game about watching legacy teams battle it out.Â
This was a game about underdogs. About an incredible squad put together by Dawn Staley. About how millions of little girls nationwide will never have to wonder why they can't see people who look like them on TV.
Most importantly, this was a game for all the girls who drew their own basketball courts and ran their own press conferences and hoped they could make it to the big stage one day if they just worked hard. If they just believed. If they just dreamed.
That game, that weekend and beyond, was about how dreams are for coming true.Â
Quad-City Times/Dispatch-Argus Women's NCAA Tournament coverage all in one place
See coverage from Quad-City Times/Dispatch-Argus reporters on the Hawkeye's trip to Cleveland for the final rounds of the NCAA tournament.Â
Iowa defeated Connecticut 71-69 Friday night to advance to the NCAA championship game for the second year in a row.
Follow along to live updates from Quad-City Times/Dispatch-Argus reporter Gretchen Teske ahead of the Iowa's game against South Carolina in Cleveland. Â
While their daughter, Kate Martin, inspires millions of women's basketball fans and viewers each week, Jill and Matt Martin inspire in classrooms.Â
The bar didn't officially open until 6 p.m. but three hours early, the Hawkeye Huddle took over.
Hawkeye fans have made the trip to Cleveland to watch the women take on the final four.
This story is bigger than how I became an LA Sparks fan at age 8.
Iowa Hawkeye women's basketball coach Lisa Bluder started her coaching career at St. Ambrose University in Davenport in 1984.
A reporter at the Final Four, specials for QC Restaurant Week - Executive Editor Tom Martin writes about what's happening in the Quad-City Times/Dispatch-Argus newsroom.