I was in the seventh grade the first time sports writing gave me a visceral feeling. UConn capped a 39-0 season to win its third national title in eight years, and I anxiously awaited the delivery of Sports Illustrated.
When it arrived, Maryland’s Juan Dixon graced the cover, but across the April 8, 2002, edition of the magazine’s top, it read: “UConn’s AMAZING WOMEN, Pg. 44.”
I immediately flipped past “Faces in the Crowd,” where you could reliably see female athletes in the magazine in 2022, and tore through the feature that detailed the lives of UConn’s close-knit seniors: Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and Tamika Williams. How they lived together off campus. Cooked weekly family dinners. Fought over card games and bet about who would be the first to cry on senior night. … I ate it up.
These details stayed with me years later, because as a women’s college basketball fan in the 1990s and 2000s, there wasn’t much out there to consume about the most exciting teams and players. You rarely forgot anything. Facts just existed in your brain (sometimes for the next 20 years).
After rereading the UConn story, I turned to the back page to check out the column I always read — “Life of Reilly.”
The headline? “Out of Touch with My Feminine Side.”
“You…
