Ok, let me preface this by making it clear to those of you who only know me through the blogosphere that I am not the least bit sportual. I am just not one of those lesbians.
I’ve played softball exactly twice. I attended one college football game, because the tradition where I went to law school is that 3Ls run down the field wearing bowler hats and carrying canes before the game. If you throw your cane and catch it again, you’re supposed to win your first case. In law school, I did learn how to follow football, because I fell into a football fan crowd. I’m up for a party where the focus is a sports event, but that’s the full extent of my fandom.
I shot my first basketball basket in a torturous horrible five minutes of PE teacher aggression and humiliation in front of approximately 120 people in the sixth grade. Before I met Jill, I attended approximately 5 women’s basketball games, mostly because of crushes on players in college.
I think I went to Mystics games once or twice in DC, because it was pretty much The Thing To Do for dykes in DC. I think 90% of the people I knew went regularly during the first couple of seasons. I don’t think anyone I knew went for the basketball; we went for the eye candy and the atmosphere. And I know I didn’t learn anything about basketball.
Then I met Jill.
Jill had center court line, row P, full season tickets to the Washington Mystics, which she shared with her friend Milton. By shared, I mean they had a pair of tickets which they occasionally used together, but mostly used to take friends to games. They even got special prizes for never missing games.
That means that Jill went to approximately 8 games per season, which is approximately 7 more than I could have imagined going to in a single year.
And you know what?
It was great!
First of all, I finally learned how to follow the game, and had someone around who could explain to me the really confusing things like why sometimes they get one free throw and sometimes they get two. And what “in the paint” meant. (I still don’t really understand the positions. It still looks like they all run up and down the court and shoot at the basket to me.)
It was also an awesome environment. The stands were probably the most integrated place I saw in DC besides the Metro. Fans included tons of families with kids, straight and gay, black and white. There were lots of kids and teenagers there, often decked out in jerseys for their favorite players, and team hats. They gorged on popcorn and hotdogs and had a blast, while the team regularly sponsored “4 pack” ticket packages that included a drink and a snack, making a family outing more affordable.
And there was also the eye candy factor. By halftime, the MCI Center bar was wall to wall lesbians, flirting, chatting, laughing, drinking, and totally ignoring the game when it started again. No matter what your type was, she was probably there, decked out, enjoying her friends, maybe checking you out.
(Incidentally, the WNBA teams and players take their responsibilities as role models and members of their communities very seriously. The WNBA Cares program involves players in a number of volunteer efforts, focusing on health and fitness, breast health awareness, reading, and youth basketball.)
Honestly, when we moved here 2 years ago, I was astonished to find out that Atlanta didn’t have a WNBA team. It seems to me like there are more lesbians here per square foot than anywhere I’ve lived before. The one time I made it to Hoedowns before I got pregnant, there were over 200 people at ladies night, compared to 25 or 30 the last time I went to Remingtons in DC. Surely some of them are sportual.
(Judging from the near-capacity crowd in Athens when we went to see the Tennessee women rout Georgia in Georgia’s worst defeat in something like 30 years, most of them!)
Atlanta is also known far and wide for the size and scope of its African-American community, even more so than metro DC. Surely all those Spelman and Morehouse and Clark Atlanta alumni who stay here want to take their kids to family friendly entertainment that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg? And all those Deltas and AKAs?
And surely the many, many, many girls who play high school basketball here in Georgia would love to get to see the best women players in the world, LIVE. And have hometown players to root for and use as role models.
Finally, the opportunity may be coming.
The business group Central Atlanta Progress has created a committee that is working to bring a WNBA franchise to Atlanta in 2008!
My lovely wife is volunteering with them — of course. (Naturally, I think they could be doing a better job of using her skills as a former Director of Operations for a major sports stadium, but that’s a secondary issue. At least they seem to be agreeing that her ideas and suggestions are good ones.)
So here’s what’s going on, and what you can do to help. Right now, the WNBA-ATL Bring It committee is almost 4 weeks into a 90-Day campaign to collect 8,000 pledges to purchase season tickets.
The web site lists the price of the highest-end tickets, don’t let it scare you away from pledging. Any ACTUAL franchise will put together partial season and other types of packages as well, that will be less expensive. (It would be nice for that information to be on the web site, but I have it on the highest authority.)
AND, although I don’t think I should let this cat identifiably out of the bag, Jill was contacted by representatives of an I-so-wish-could-tell-you-who-but-I-really-can’t reality television program, expressing interest in possibly filming portions of the campaign. Normally, I would be a little scared, but actually, I think it would be incredibly cool.
Anyway, the bottom line is this: Think you might be willing to buy a season ticket/partial season package of WNBA tickets? Fill out the pledge! Ask your friends to fill out the pledge. Ask the March Madness crazy people at your office to fill out the pledge. Please!
Want to do more to help? Leave a comment here and I’ll give your unpublished email address from the comment to Jill, or go over to the WNBA-ATL web site and send an email to their volunteer person.
