I so wish my mother were alive today. She would be proudly sporting a bright gold shirt with No. 22 emblazoned across her chest, and we would be sitting side by side at every possible University of Iowa women’s basketball game. My mother would love Caitlin Clark!
Clark, of course, is the basketball phenomenon who is electrifying fans across the country with her deadeye 3-point shooting, mind-blowing passing and exhilarating team play. Most importantly, Clark, along with her teammates and coaches, has changed how girls and women’s sports are played, and perceived, forever.
My mother was a gifted athlete at a time when sports for women barely existed. She was a freshman in high school, a city girl from Denver, when Mildred “Babe” Didrikson won three medals in the 1932 Olympics including the gold for javelin and hurdles — an unprecedented achievement that opened the door, just a crack, for future women athletes.
At a time when very few women attended college, my mother made up her mind to pursue a degree at what today is the University of Northern Colorado, majoring in physical education — what we now know as exercise science.
In summer, she played softball for Joe’s Cave, a well-known bar in the Barnum neighborhood of Denver. She met her future husband, a graduate student from Peru, Illinois, on the tennis courts in Greeley, Colorado, where, according to my dad, she beat him without mercy.
For many years, my mother taught high school physical education — encouraging girls to appreciate their bodies and to build strength and confidence through physical fitness and sports. Luckily for me, I was one of those girls. We learned field hockey, basketball, golf, tennis and other sports while the boys were playing dodgeball in the much larger “boys” gymnasium.
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In those pre-Title IX days with no interschool sports for girls in my home state of South Dakota, she founded a local branch of the Girls Athletic Association, or GAA, fundraising among local supporters so that we could have our own equipment and scheduling activities on her own time after school. I still have my GAA letter with pins attached for basketball, softball and bowling.
I remember talking with my mother in the summer of 1972 when the Title IX legislation had become law. She was so excited to know that girls would no longer be excluded from participation in school sports and all the benefits that come with them. She was imagining what Title IX would mean for her own granddaughters — some of whom would become high school and collegiate athletes.
So I’m smiling as I picture sitting beside my mother in the fourth row right next to the band at Carver Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City. She would love knowing the game has been sold-out for weeks. She would admire the depth of knowledge and skill so evident in head coach Lisa Bluder and her staff. She would be blown away by the athleticism and enthusiasm of Clark and her teammates. And she would, without a doubt, join in to cheer on the Hawkeyes — hopefully to another win.
But win or lose, my mother might just be most delighted to see what happens after the game when dozens of beaming young girls gather around Clark, markers in hand, each waiting for her to sign their No. 22 jersey — aspiring to their own athletic dreams.
Maybe Mom would even get an autograph herself.
Susan Koch, Ph.D., is a retired chancellor of the University of Illinois at Springfield. She lives in Iowa City. ©2024 Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
