Being a sportswear company for female athletes, I feel I need to write on the trending topic of “women’s sports” and “women’s basketball.” I feel the need to, and I want to.
I had a conversation last week with a male athlete during the Elite Eight match-up featuring the elite Superhera, Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes versus West Virginia Mountaineers. This athlete hadn’t traditionally watched women’s basketball, and they had a lot of technical analysis (positively and negatively critical).
They said, “what do you think?” I had the biggest smile on my face. I said, “I love it. You’re really watching, and you care enough to have a technical analysis about a women’s basketball player’s skill set and demeanor — as an athlete.”
I gathered with friends in Park Slope in Brooklyn over some epic BK pizza to watch the back-to-back games of the Final Four. No one in that room was leaving for 5 hours. I played in a Soccer Final Four in 2016. My experience, in this 2-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, looked and felt different than my Final Four experience.
I’m not diminishing my playing experience and our effort to get to a Final Four. But it's the fact that everyone else — the fans — understood the impact of the effort it takes to get to that point.
Of course, as a player, you understand the hype. It’s the all-out battles, extremely small margin for error, luck, and insane amount of energy and focus. You almost didn’t even know you had it in you. But you’re so focused on finding every way to win, you also don’t really overthink it.
You can taste the Natty (National Championship), and at that point, after all 4 all-out games to get to the Final Four (Round of 64, 32, 16, 8), you truly believe you can win it all.
Watching the Women’s Basketball March Madness Final Four, and listening to my friends (some old, some brand new) discuss the intensity of the game, and throwing bets out for every single statistic… It was a moment I think I’ll remember forever. All I could think to myself is — they get it. They feel it. Just like my friend who analyzed the Elite 8 game.
No, women’s sports didn’t just get good. There’s an entire history of women’s basketball and women’s basketball players being insanely excellent. My favorite example since women’s and men’s basketball are often compared, is the relationship between Sue Bird and Kyrie Irving. Kyrie watches and learns from Sue Bird’s moves (who also happens to be one of my favorite players of all time). For those who don’t know about Sue, she’s at 2x NCAA National Champion and one of the best players and point guards ever to play (WNBA & NBA).
Women and men have been chipping away to get women’s sports to receive the attention that it deserves — like the 18.9 million views for the National Championship game.
While I understand the sentiment that “women’s sports didn’t just get cool, you just started to care,” I choose to re-frame this as: welcome, join us.
And, I pay massive homage/respects/THANK YOU’s to the people who fought to get women’s sports on the map — from the coaches fighting for field time, the very first local town newspaper article on the 10 page of the Sports Section in the bottom right corner… to the stage it’s on now and beyond.
We need collective support of all sports fans (old and new), for women’s sports to continue and grow its success. As an established Athletic Director recently told me, winning is contagious, no matter where it comes from.
This is also how I’m building SPRHRA — sportswear for female athletes. Building sportswear for female athletes is synonymous with the lack of sports media coverage that women’s sports have received, because the system wasn’t built for female athletes to succeed, period.
And yet, we need collective support from men — brothers, uncles, coaches, dads, sports admin, husbands, boyfriends, friends — in order for us to amplify our mission about getting every female athlete the freedom to perform. Because when one group rises, so should the other.
Winning is contagious.
Now, of course, I have to write something about uniforms — women’s basketball jerseys and women’s basketball shorts — because that’s what we do and create. I look forward to the day when the Superheras on the March Madness basketball court are wearing our gear (some were wearing our Wrap Compression shorts, which I freaked out about), uniquely custom-sized fit for their body.
74% of female athletes don’t feel they look like a female athlete. I know Olympic female athletes who worry about what they look like on TV because their gear makes them feel so uncomfortable.
Our focus becomes — let’s not just create uniforms to play in (or a TV channel to play on) — let’s create uniforms and gear, like women’s basketball shorts and compression shorts, that actually enhance their performance and health. It’s no different than putting Women’s March Madness on primetime television, rather than a hidden channel no one can find.
We believe in not just making the best for female athletes, in relation to what men get, but the best for female athletes period. We can only do this with the collective support of everyone, a true team. Welcome, join us.
xx 
