Colton’s Corner: Embrace Women’s Sports

Women’s sports is in a sort of renaissance as of late and it is not hard to see why.

The College Women’s Basketball National Championship Game drew in a whopping 18.8 million viewers who watched the No.1 ranked team in South Carolina battle Iowa under the play of superstar sensation Caitlin Clark.

Two days before that, Clark and Iowa battled the UConn Huskies where 14.4 million people watched the game.

Both games became one of the most watched college basketball games in the history of ESPN with the National Championship Game being the most viewed college basketball game on ESPN for both men and women.

It is an amazing feeling to see women’s basketball get the love and support the sport has always deserved as well as other sports.

Women’s volleyball is slowly making its way into the mainframe, softball continues to make strides, women’s soccer continues to grow and now basketball has now reached the mainstream.

Yet I still worry that the powers that be will end up fumbling this golden opportunity.

Prior to contrary belief, women’s basketball has always been filled with talent.

My earliest memories of women’s college basketball is watching Candace Parker and Tennessee going on their monster run winning two national championships in 2008 and 2009.

My favorite memory by far during that time is watching Texas A&M and power forward Danielle Adams in 2011.

The Aggies had defeated arch-rival Baylor led by Brittney Griner in the Elite Eight after losing to the Bears the previous three times.

Texas A&M went on to beat Stanford then Notre Dame to win the National Championship.

In the era of Candace Parker, Maya Moore, Brittney Griner, and Skylar Diggins, women’s basketball did not reach the same heights where sport is now in terms of media coverage and importance.

The talent has always been there yet the lack of support has struggled to meet where the demands are.

One of the problems with the coverage of the NCAA Tournament was the extreme focus on Clark that took away time and energy spent on building up other players in the tournament.

JuJu Watkins from USC, Angel Reese from LSU, Madison Booker from Texas, Cameron Brink from Stanford, Kamilla Cardoso from South Carolina are just the few key players that made major contributions to their teams whose stories could have been taken away by the media's decisions to focus on Clark.

This isn’t to say Clark deserved the attention, but to suck up the air that could have been shared is disappointing.

Media companies need to do a better job of showcasing not just women’s basketball but women’s sports as a whole.

In a day of social media where we can see everything, women’s sports have the opportunity to break that glass ceiling and into mainstream media where it deserves to be.

Women’s sports are here to stay.

It’s now time to give them support.

cmcwilliams @sanmarcosrecord.com Twitter: @ColtonBMc