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Dear Editor:
I wanted to weigh in on the amazing popularity of women’s college basketball. Most of the nation is amazed, but I am not. I always knew it to be a fastpaced dance up and down the court.
No, I was not a player. I was a women’s sports information director at the University of Houston in the early 1980s. It was my job to keep the stats of the team, send out press releases to local media about upcoming games and results of games played, and to pitch story ideas about individual players to print, radio, and tv editors.
Luckily, my job was not dependent on how many story placements I got in a season. I would have been gone after one season!
I often felt like a failure to not get more coverage for the team. It was just something everyone accepted. Houston is a major sports market, my bosses would say. Fighting for space on a sports page or be given airtime on radio and TV sports reports rarely happened.
The hierarchy of what got covered was led by the pro sports teams, then college football and basketball, then high school football and basketball. Next came coverage of Texas sports, especially football, and then the editors and producers had to leave space for national coverage of winning teams and major sports stars.
That did not deter me. I faithfully made calls to sports desks to report final scores of the games and faxed over the stats. Victory came when a score was mentioned on the 10 pm news and or the game’s box score was printed in the paper the next day. I think they even had smaller agate type for women’s sports than for the men’s.
The day after the game my job was to clip out the mentions, tape them to a piece of paper, make copies of the pages of stats and stories for men’s and women’s teams and distribute them to the athletic staff and coaches. Very lowtech.
Frustrating? Yes. I remember being incensed one day when my short story on the Lady Coogs’ win and accompanying box score did not make the Houston Chronicle because the sports editor opted to include a photo of tennis player Tracy Austin’s home that had been TPed (toilet-papered) for her birthday.
I placed a call to the editor pointing out his error in judgment. Let’s just say it didn’t go well. l had my boss to thank for not following through on the editor’s call for my immediate dismissal from the sports information department. There was a drought of Lady Coogs’ coverage for a while after that and it’s probably why my application to be a writer on the Chronicle staff never saw the light of day.
I did take pride in keeping good stats for the “girls”, notching every field-goal and free-throw attempt, rebound, assist, and points scored. Remember in math class when you would ask the teachers, “When am I ever going to need to know how to do this?” Well, I wish I had paid more attention to how to calculate percentages and where to put the decimal points.
Sometimes I got to travel with the team out of state just in case that reporter was there at practice waiting for that one story he didn’t know he needed. I recall one game at the University of Nevada Las Vegas where I sat at the scorer’s table diligently keeping stats of a game played in the cavernous arena with sprinklings of fans here and there.
At the end of the game, I met with the UNLV sports information director and compared stats. His record keeping was vastly different than mine as he admitted he just kind of added some numbers to each column based on what he thought happened but not based on reality.
I brought it up with the UH coach who did express concern but didn’t challenge the results. After all UNLV was the home team and their stats were the official stats. Can you imagine the ire of a Kim Mulkey (LSU head coach) if this took place today?!?!?
I had heard of some colleges having luck in promoting a game between sports writers and the women’s basketball team to show these guys just how talented and serious the women were about their sport. Many had a huge attendance at these games and garnered more fans this way. So, I tried the same.
The game was fun, and it did result in some good coverage from the sports writers, but not too many fans cared that this event was happening on campus. That was the other excuse given for poor attendance – UH is predominantly a commuter school, so not much campus life.
For this event I also worked with the university bookstore to make special T-shirts that said “I [heart] the Lady Coogs.” I was thrilled when the number sold reached three digits (bought mostly from the team and their families.)
As I watched the Final Four this past weekend with every seat filled and hearing it cost $1,000 per ticket I felt redemption. The Lady Coogs rarely had maybe a hundred fans in the stands. The announcement of the players’ names (usually done by me since I couldn’t find a regular announcer to work all the games) would echo off the walls of Hofheinz Pavilion. Sometimes we would get a decent crowd when the opponent was Louisiana Tech, led by Sonja Hogg, or University of Texas, led by Jody Conradt.
I am so grateful for having experienced the thankless job of being the women’s sports information director (translate: big title, low pay). The women on the team didn’t care if there were two people or 10,000 in the stands. They kept playing their game and set the stage for the coming attractions of 2024 March Madness where records for attendance and viewership OF ANY SPORT were shattered. Well played, girls. Well played.
Theresa Parker
