Latest / Raising the Game: Covering WNBA, NWSL, PWHL & More / Episode 13 | What's the Story: The Door, Part 1 — Pioneers of Women's Sports

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Episode 13 | What's the Story: The Door, Part 1 — Pioneers of Women's Sports · Raising the Game: Covering WNBA, NWSL, PWHL & More

0:00
We already know this girl's a badass.
0:01
She's going to do just fine on a sprained ankle.
0:04
Like polio couldn't take her down.
0:06
Sprained ankle's not going to hurt her.
0:15
Hi, I'm Caitlin. Hi, I'm Alex.
0:18
And welcome to a special episode of Raising the Game.
0:24
So we've been talking about this for the last few episodes, and
0:28
we are coming to you today with a little bit of a different
0:32
structure to what you normally hear on Raising the Game.
0:35
We're going to take our first journey through kind of a story
0:40
arc. With it being Women's History
0:43
Month, we wanted to celebrate by talking about some of The
0:46
Pioneers who have gotten us to what we see today in women's
0:52
sports. Sort of do a brief overview of a
0:55
bunch of super impactful female athletes and then hopefully in
1:00
future episodes be able to do a little bit deeper dive on each
1:03
of them. Yeah, yeah, I've had a lot of
1:05
fun prepping for this so. Yeah, I've learned a lot more
1:09
than I realized. So we are looking forward to
1:13
this one and would love to hear from you, how you how you feel
1:17
about this, this episode. So episode one of this special
1:25
episode type, which we're tentatively workshopping is
1:28
what's the story is called the door.
1:32
And really in that, we're using that as the metaphor for how
1:37
these women sort of had to bang a door down, get it to crack
1:43
open all the different things, challenges they had to face as
1:46
they were fighting for equality, equity, respect in a lot of
1:52
cases. So let's get into it.
1:56
Let's do it. So we spend a lot of time on the
1:59
podcast talking about records, talk about attendance records.
2:04
We talk about world records and performance, right?
2:08
We talk about sold out venues. We've been hyping some of those,
2:13
you know, high viewership games, viewership records and things
2:17
like that. None of what we talk about here
2:21
today on raising the game would be possible without the women
2:26
who paved the way to. Get here.
2:27
Absolutely. And So what we really sought to
2:31
answer as we were prepping for this was how did we get here,
2:35
but more importantly, who got us here?
2:38
Yeah, yeah. And so I think what we want to
2:40
do is kind of introduce the idea that we've already discussed
2:43
here of a of a through line called the door.
2:48
And what we're going to kind of do here is talk about 11
2:51
different women and how each of those on this list kind of broke
2:58
down a door, built a new one, or held it open long enough for the
3:03
next generation to walk through it, and sometimes at very
3:08
enormous personal cost. Yeah, often.
3:13
And the other thing I think that we're going to highlight is that
3:15
not every woman had the same door in front of them.
3:19
It was always something new. And so I think we're going to
3:25
have a lot of similar themes here about kind of this
3:28
relentless pursuit against different types of resistance
3:33
and then also kind of what differentiates them and kind of
3:36
dig into a little bit into each of those and kind of try to
3:42
bring it back to how it connects to what we talk about on a
3:44
weekly basis. Yeah, yeah.
3:47
So let's get into it. We're going to open this with
3:51
kind of our first chapter, if you will, that really is
3:55
centered around proving or owning existence.
4:00
And we're going to start back in the 1950s with Althea Gibson.
4:08
So imagine being told your whole life that a room doesn't exist
4:14
for you. And then one day, someone
4:17
finally unlocks the door and you walk in and you still can't win.
4:23
So that was Althea Gibson in 1950.
4:26
So taking us back a little bit of her origin story.
4:29
Althea was born in 1927 in Harlem, New York.
4:33
She discovered tennis through the paddle courts just in the
4:38
neighborhoods where she grew up and through that ended up
4:43
acquiring a mentor who's actually a black physician in
4:46
the neighborhood who mentored her through the all Black ATA
4:52
circuit that was the only circuit available to black
4:56
people at the time. The mainstream USLTA circuit was
5:02
of course segregated and closed off as an opportunity to her
5:06
entirely. Yeah, 100%.
5:08
So moving ahead, we get into the 50s.
5:12
So Althea is, you know, 23 years old at this point in time.
5:20
She has this door cracked open for her by white tennis champion
5:26
Alice Marble. She writes a public letter
5:31
shaming the establishment into compliance.
5:34
So she's a really big tennis star at the time.
5:36
She writes this letter to the USLTA and is basically like,
5:41
it's abominable that you don't allow this woman to compete.
5:46
She's very qualified. The only reason you're excluding
5:49
her is racism. Right, And they end up allowing
5:55
Althea to play. Amazing.
5:57
And Althea becomes the first black player to compete at the
6:01
US National Championships in Forest Hills.
6:03
So this is 1950. And then in 1951, so she showed
6:07
up, was finally allowed to compete on the tennis circuit.
6:11
And one year later, she is the first black player to compete at
6:15
Wimbledon. Yeah, yeah.
6:18
That's huge. That's a massive, massive
6:20
achievement and I think it's kind of interesting how she was
6:26
able to getting, getting there is not the same as being
6:32
welcomed really, right? Like, just because you're
6:35
allowed in doesn't mean that you are welcome there.
6:39
Yeah, You can imagine like the just like discomfort, like an
6:45
outright kind of lack of safety that she probably experienced
6:49
being in those same quote, UN quote rooms as other players on
6:54
the circuit, being the only black woman at the time.
6:58
And so I think we actually, we're going to see a little bit
7:01
more of this here in her story or so she wins Wimbledon and
7:05
then the US State Department decides in the mid 1950s that
7:12
they're actually going to use her as this like symbol of
7:15
American excellence. And they have her go play tennis
7:19
in Asia and Southeast Asia on this like goodwill tour.
7:23
And she's so she's they're they're validating or qualifying
7:28
that she's good enough to be used as a symbol for like
7:31
American excellence. Yet she's not even held.
7:36
There's not even space held for her back home.
7:38
Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like you're good,
7:40
but we want you to go away for a little bit and like exactly not
7:44
be in the spotlight. Or like, we're going to go put
7:46
you up on a pedestal somewhere where they don't have the same
7:49
societal rules that we do, right?
7:51
Or they're just not enforced in the same ways.
7:54
I mean, we're literally talking about bored versus Brown.
7:59
Yeah, Brown versus Board of Education, excuse me, like
8:01
passed right around in America at this point.
8:05
And it took 20 years for that to like really kind of settle into
8:10
normalcy or semi normalcy. And obviously we know we still
8:13
face tensions around us today. So she's doing this tour and you
8:19
can imagine how that like we've just talked about, we're
8:21
speculating, but like how that would make you feel.
8:24
She considers quitting tennis all together.
8:27
So this is in 1955. She's about 28 years old.
8:30
She's kind of getting into close to her 30s.
8:33
And she doesn't really feel like she has a path, like she has a
8:37
road map and she kind of has to go do like some soul searching,
8:43
right? And in that soul searching, I
8:47
think this is where we really see that resilience that you
8:50
referenced in the intro, right? She decides she's not going to
8:53
quit. She actually decides, hey, I'm
8:58
uniquely gifted and talented to excel in this sport.
9:03
And so far when I've walked into these rooms because of the fear,
9:06
because of, you know, the prejudice, I've sort of shown up
9:10
and tried to not lose. She's like, I'm going to go out
9:15
and I'm going to dominate. Yeah, right.
9:17
Yeah. And I think the the big thing
9:18
there is that there's a lot of things that make the story
9:21
great. And the decision of her to
9:24
continue on is kind of the the turning point here.
9:27
Yeah. And I think we'll actually see
9:29
that as a theme for a lot of these women, right, where
9:32
they're deciding, door gets slammed, right?
9:35
And they're deciding like, well, I'm going to go find another
9:37
door, I'm going to force this one open.
9:38
Yeah, right. So here's the payoff.
9:41
She comes back to tennis or decides to kind of stay in it
9:45
and starts to compete. And then in 1957, so it's about
9:51
two years or so, or excuse me, 7 years I should say, after she
9:56
was at Wimbledon, before she wins Wimbledon on center court
10:03
in Wimbledon in England, right? And she's handed the trophy by
10:08
Queen Elizabeth the 2nd. And I like couldn't get this
10:13
image out of my head because I'm sitting here being like, here we
10:17
have the symbol of like one of the most extensive colonizing
10:22
nations in the world. And and then this woman who has
10:28
faced segregation prejudices back home, obviously, right?
10:33
And so it was just, I couldn't shake that image from my eyes.
10:37
I was thinking about her story. It's like a weird juxtaposition.
10:41
For some reason, I really imagine kind of a lot of kind of
10:44
empty faces while the awards being handed off by a lot of
10:48
different people. Yeah, but you know what a what a
10:52
way to kind of like reach that pinnacle and then guess what,
10:56
y'all? She turns around and she does it
10:57
again. She wins back-to-back Wimbledon
10:59
Championships. She wins in that same time
11:02
period back-to-back U.S. National championships.
11:06
She is named AP female athlete of the year during that time.
11:10
And she is the first world #1 ranked tennis player as a black
11:17
woman. So just out of that like desire
11:20
to not quit and like embrace who she was kind of, she became the
11:27
best in the world. Yeah.
11:28
And I mean, it's, it's, it is the one of those American
11:31
stories, right from the Harlem courts to being the best in the
11:36
world while facing probably the biggest adversity an athlete
11:41
could face in this time, right? Or anyone could.
11:43
Face anyone, right? Yeah, anybody.
11:46
And so we'll wrap up Althea Gibson with kind of that legacy
11:50
that she leaves. So not only did she go on in,
11:54
you know, pioneer in tennis as a black woman, she also was the
11:57
first ever black woman to play in the L GB LPGA Tour.
12:03
So in 1964, about 36 years old, six years after winning those
12:08
back-to-back Wimbledon Championships, she becomes the
12:12
first black woman to play on the pro golf tour.
12:15
And I think it it, it, it feels pretty inherent to me that
12:23
Althea Gibson would be central to the inspiration for extra
12:30
famous tennis players like the Williams sisters.
12:33
Now we have Coco Goth, American superstar right now, Victoria
12:38
Umboco is a teenager, a young black woman from Canada who's
12:43
coming up who like you think about it, the the representation
12:49
that Althea provided really swung that door more open, not
12:54
all the way as we'll talk about, but more open for for those
12:58
women. Yeah.
12:58
And I think that the other interesting thing that we're
13:00
gonna, I think we're gonna touch on here is that there were
13:03
multiple, some of these women's that knocked down some of these
13:06
doors, played multiple sports, which is actually kind of
13:10
insane. So more power to them.
13:14
Do we have an Althea Gibson of today's women's sports, or is
13:19
this kind of like its own special story?
13:25
So I kind of think of, I don't think she's necessary.
13:29
Well, she is. I along the same, you know,
13:34
racial lines, right? And the prejudices that exist
13:37
there. I think a little bit of Layla
13:39
Edwards, who we just saw become the first black American women
13:44
play hockey, represent the United States, which seems
13:47
crazy. It's 2026 and this is the first
13:50
time that we've done that. Now, I wouldn't, I would say
13:53
that that has a little bit of a different tenor to it because a
13:56
lot of times for these sports, it's not necessarily for Layla,
14:01
it wasn't segregation that was keeping her out or other black
14:05
women out of hockey. Often times it's the it's the
14:09
the cost, right? And hockey, we've talked about
14:12
before on the pod is very expensive.
14:15
Very. Affluent type.
14:17
Very affluent, very localized too.
14:20
Like you don't hockey isn't as widespread as some other sports,
14:23
right. So I think she's she's
14:26
pioneering in her own right. I think in terms of like facing
14:30
the same kind of challenges like no, because and we are not
14:34
qualified. To no, not at all on those
14:37
challenges, those. Challenges at all and so it's I
14:40
can't really compare her to anyone else right now.
14:45
Yeah, that's valid. Yeah, so but history is still
14:49
being made is proof and point with with Layla Edwards.
14:53
So staying in this chapter of sort of like proving your
14:56
existence right. We talked about that just now
14:59
with with Gibson and we're going to move to probably a better
15:03
known name for the audience if you're a sports head just
15:05
generally, but Wilma Rudolph, Wilma Rudolph is really an
15:12
incredible story and another one of resilience and kind of
15:15
refusing to quit right. So doctor said, excuse me, that
15:22
she would never walk normally. Her mother is behind every
15:28
success story is a. Mother.
15:30
Said otherwise. So Wilma Rudolph was born
15:34
prematurely in 1940 in Clarksville, TN.
15:38
She was the 20th of 22. You heard me, children.
15:45
Or parents. Her mom, her mom, y'all snaps
15:49
for her mom. And she spent the first decade
15:54
of her life in a body that just kind of refused to work, right?
15:58
She had double pneumonia, scarlet fever.
16:03
She survived polio and ended up in a brace on it, with a brace
16:07
on her left leg for almost seven years after that.
16:11
So this was all before she turned 5, like some somebody was
16:16
telling her to quit. Yeah.
16:17
Yeah. And her mom, her mom was like,
16:21
heck to the no, you're going to you're going to live, you're
16:23
going to thrive, Wilma. So she actually had like her,
16:28
you know, two dozen brothers and sisters take turns.
16:32
Mom set up like a rotation schedule for them to massage her
16:36
leg to kind of like keep the blood flowing, right?
16:38
And things like that, things that are really, really
16:40
important when you have an injury like that.
16:42
And one day, she's 12 years old. She walks into church one
16:47
Sunday. No leg brace.
16:49
Never put it back. On never put it back on.
16:51
Never put it back on. So she's 12 years old when that
16:53
happens. And then it was like, all bets
16:57
are off. I'm throwing myself in every
16:58
single sport they'll let me play.
17:00
So she played basketball. She ran track in high school.
17:04
She once scored 803 points in a season for for high school
17:10
basketball, which set a state record at the time.
17:13
And then she was discovered by this man named Ed Temple, who
17:17
ran the Tiger Bells track and field program at Tennessee State
17:22
University. And so she gets discovered there
17:27
at the age of 16. So before she's would have
17:31
graduated high school right into in this day and age, she goes
17:36
and competes at her first Olympics.
17:37
So she's out in Melbourne in the 1956 Olympics, she wins a bronze
17:43
medal in the 4 by 100m relay. And you're kind of like, wow,
17:47
incredible. This girl literally just got out
17:49
of a leg brace. Four years ago.
17:51
And she didn't stop there. Yeah, she just kept going.
17:55
Yeah, I think we're going back, I mean overcoming the odds.
17:59
I think we talked about it in our prep.
18:01
Like what an origin story for you to basically be like, I was
18:05
in this leg brace. I refused to give up.
18:07
We made it work and I got out of it and I'm just going to
18:10
continue to push it from there the whole way, right?
18:13
Yes, yes, like I would be so fascinated to learn more about
18:18
like, what was the therapy? Because you also have to imagine
18:22
that, like, her mom was a genius, like, realizing that
18:27
essentially what she created for Wilma was physical therapy,
18:31
right? And she did it probably without,
18:33
like, really knowing what she was doing.
18:35
It was just like, this seems to help her lessen her pain.
18:39
Yeah. Unless.
18:40
Something is better than doing nothing.
18:41
Right. Exactly.
18:42
And so it's just it's really incredible.
18:45
And you can sort of see where Wilma probably got her stick to
18:48
itiveness. Yeah, exactly.
18:50
So we we win the bronze medal in the 191956 Olympics.
18:56
We go four years ahead to the Rome Olympics in 1960.
19:02
Wilma's competing on a sprained ankle that happened in kind of a
19:07
a accident the day before she's supposed to race.
19:11
OK, we already know this girl's a badass.
19:13
She's going to do just fine on a sprained ankle.
19:16
Like polio couldn't take her down.
19:18
Sprained ankle's not going to hurt her.
19:20
She wins gold in the 200m race. Individual.
19:25
She wins gold in the 100 meter individual race and then fumbles
19:31
the baton a couple of times but still manages to win gold,
19:36
anchoring the four by 100m relay team.
19:40
So that's three golds in one Olympics.
19:42
This has never been done by any American woman before.
19:46
Black, white, no one. And the European press famously
19:51
called her the fastest woman in the world.
19:54
And as she's like walking around Rome, she's in Italy.
19:57
Like she's getting mobbed by fans because now you're like one
20:02
of the most recognizable athletes there.
20:04
If you watch the Summer Olympics, you know that, like
20:08
track and field is like one of the marquee kind of events of
20:13
the Olympics. It's one of the oldest ones
20:15
that's been around since it started, right?
20:17
So you can imagine kind of what that.
20:20
Like sort of sudden celebrity rated and remind you guys she's
20:24
20 years old. Yeah, at this time.
20:27
I think it's totally, I mean, hindsight's 2020, but like, you
20:31
learn about her origin story and then she gets a sprained ankle
20:34
and you're like, this ain't slow on her now, right?
20:36
Like she's still going to go out.
20:38
Like, you know, yeah, you know where this is going to happen.
20:41
So that's not even the most impressive part of her story.
20:45
So she comes home to Clarksville.
20:47
She's got her three golds. They want to celebrate her
20:49
right? They want to throw this victory
20:51
parade in a banquet and say like, woo woo, you're great and
20:54
we claim you right? We want you to represent us.
21:00
And of course, we're remind you we're in the 1960s.
21:04
So as Alex mentioned before, like we had had legal movement
21:11
to end segregation, but the like societal movement to end
21:16
segregation was not happening yet.
21:19
So Wilma does what Wilma does and she's like, I'm not coming
21:24
unless it's integrated. I'm just not going to show up.
21:27
And the city was like, all right, we'll integrate this
21:31
because again, they wanted that they wanted to kind of
21:35
capitalize right on the celebrity and then the
21:38
notoriety, which we're going to see.
21:40
That is a theme too here. And so that Homecoming Parade
21:44
became the first, one of the first integrated public events,
21:48
public events in the country and was the first integrated public
21:53
event there in Clarksville, TN. Again, I want to remind
21:57
everybody she was 2020. Years old.
22:00
And understood the power she had in that moment.
22:05
We're going to, I mean, we have a there's a lot of different
22:08
themes that exist in the different stories we have here.
22:11
And this is one that will come up a lot as well is where do
22:15
you, where have these women also used their sudden celebrity,
22:20
the, the power, whatever it is that they have to further
22:24
something that's bigger than them.
22:26
And we've got a couple of really good ones coming up that we're
22:28
going to talk about. But I think that's a huge theme
22:31
to also kind of listen for and understand that is going to
22:34
happen a lot. For sure.
22:36
So just wrapping up with her legacy.
22:38
She actually retired from competition two years later at
22:41
22. She's like, I'm good, I've won.
22:43
I'm going to go out on top and like be done with this, move on
22:46
to the next thing in my life. And little bit later in her
22:49
life, she founded the Wilma Rudolph Foundation where they go
22:53
in and and mentor and coach underprivileged youth, right.
22:58
So again, kind of understanding like her value and being able to
23:03
use that for good in her community is is a theme
23:07
throughout Rudolph's life. She was also like Althea Gibson,
23:11
named AP Female Athlete of the Year 2 times in a row and has of
23:16
course been abducted, inducted to the US Olympic Track and
23:22
Field Hall of Fame. And her story, of course, has
23:26
inspired the likes of Jackie Joyner, Kersey Florence Griffith
23:31
Joyner Flojo, Shikari Richardson, right of, of this
23:35
day and age, for sure, Allison Felix, Like there's a whole host
23:39
of now of, of black women, frankly, who demonstrate their
23:43
excellence in track and field that, that we've grown up with
23:47
now. And that's a direct result of.
23:53
So unfortunately, she did pass away in 1994, pretty young, 54,
23:59
from cancer. But her, her legacy certainly
24:02
lived lives on through her foundation and those that she's
24:06
inspired with her story. Yeah, it's a it's an inch story
24:09
of from a young age having obstacles and just never
24:14
learning to say sure, yeah, I'll just deal Like I'm not going to
24:19
bite it, right. She just stood up to every
24:21
single one. The leg brace, the sprained
24:24
ankle, the city who didn't want to integrate, like everything,
24:28
right? So just a super cool story.
24:32
All right, So we're going to move on here to Patsy Mink.
24:37
So every time a girl steps onto a soccer field, a basketball
24:41
court or a college track, every time a scholarship gets awarded,
24:47
a woman's team gets funded, a locker room gets built, there is
24:51
a name most of them will never know.
24:54
Patsy Takamoto Mink. She didn't set a world record.
24:59
She didn't win a gold medal. She did what was harder.
25:02
She walked into the most powerful legislative body in the
25:05
world and rewrote the rules. And it started with a rejection
25:09
letter. Of course, as that's what we.
25:14
Do so. She was born December 6th, 1927
25:18
in and again a name I'm probably going to butcher Pae Pae, Maui,
25:23
Hawaii, third generation Japanese American.
25:27
Tough time to be a Japanese American.
25:30
Especially growing up under the shadow of World War Two.
25:34
Yeah, Japanese Americans faced a ton of discrimination,
25:37
suspicion, all that during and after the war.
25:40
Yes, she excelled academically, academically valedictorian of
25:44
her high school class and deeply passionate about medicine.
25:50
Applied to medical schools across the country after
25:52
graduating from the University of Hawaii and was rejected from
25:57
everyone explicitly because she was a woman and a woman of color
26:02
of. Course not, because she wasn't
26:04
qualified. Yes, because she had two strikes
26:07
against her starting out. One school told her directly
26:11
they did not accept woman and others just didn't respond.
26:16
So this is really like for me is go, I mean, we've seen it now
26:20
with the first two women as well.
26:22
But like every one of these pioneers sort of has that moment
26:27
of like, no, like the door gets slammed in your face, right?
26:31
And this was like really, really slammed in her face.
26:34
Like this was her dream. She really, really wanted to do
26:37
it. And she was literally told that
26:40
because of things she she cannot.
26:43
Control at all? Everything she could control,
26:46
she did fine. Yes, right.
26:48
Things she couldn't control, she was not allowed.
26:50
Yes, Yep, so. So she had a bit of a pivot,
26:54
unable to enter the the. I can't not like hear Ross.
26:58
'S voice pivot. Unable to enter medicine, Mink
27:02
enrolled in the University of Chicago Law School and graduated
27:06
in 1951, one of very few women in the class and the only
27:11
Japanese American in the class. And she returned to Hawaii and
27:15
was initially denied admission to the Hawaii bar because she
27:18
was not yet a resident. And she fought that and won.
27:23
Theme of fighting Fighting. She built a legal and political
27:28
career in Hawaii, becoming a prominent voice for civil rights
27:31
and equality, and in 1964 was elected to the US House of
27:35
Representatives, the first woman of of color ever elected to
27:39
Congress. And she's like, I think what you
27:41
said, 64. She's like 37 years old right
27:44
now. She's like pretty young for.
27:47
Sorry, yeah, she's she's really young.
27:50
She's really young. She is really young.
27:53
You're so young. And she carried with her every
27:57
single day the memory of every door that had been closed.
28:01
Yeah. I mean, I think this is where
28:03
it's like, where's that kind of pivot away from the door that
28:07
got closed and like, where's that door that is open?
28:09
And then I'm actually going to lean into that door and say what
28:14
Ave. can I take to ensure that like that other door doesn't get
28:19
closed? On the other, 100%.
28:23
And so now we get into probably something that everyone is
28:27
somewhat familiar with here. So throughout the late 1960s,
28:31
she witnessed first hand the systemic exclusion of women from
28:35
education and athletics. Women were routinely denied
28:38
admission to universities, professional programs and
28:41
athletic opportunities on the basis of sex.
28:44
Mink became a lead architect and champion of the Education
28:48
Amendments of 1972. And we're going to talk here
28:53
about Title 9, and I thought probably best to just read it.
28:58
And it's 37 words, so not a long one, but I think everyone will
29:03
understand here. No person in the United States
29:06
shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in,
29:11
be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination
29:15
under any education program or activity receiving federal
29:19
financial assistance. And this was signed into law on
29:23
June 23rd, 1972 by President Nixon.
29:28
At the time of passage, fewer than one in 27 girls played high
29:32
school sports in America. It's like gut.
29:35
Wrenching in here. She understood that equal
29:38
education meant equal access to everything, including athletics.
29:42
It's like it's really crazy to think that something so like
29:52
sort of brief can have the impact there.
29:58
I mean, there's there is no greater moment for women's
30:05
sports than this. Like I was able to play high
30:08
school sports because of this legislation, Everything up,
30:10
right, because you had to create equal opportunity, right, if you
30:16
were receiving federal funding, which all public schools
30:19
receive, right? So thank you to Patsy May on
30:26
behalf of women everywhere. And I think it's, I love that
30:32
she sort of, we've talked so far about examples of sort of
30:38
gaining attention through performance and that she went on
30:43
it through policy, which is in some ways can be more lasting,
30:49
has had a more lasting impact in a, in a very hard to change way.
30:55
Yeah, right. So we're going to Fast forward
30:58
50 years and can you guess the number of of women of girls who
31:03
play high school sports? One in 27 in 1972.
31:06
In 2022, one in two. Half half of all girls play high
31:13
school sports now. Yeah, that's amazing.
31:18
It's also amazing too 'cause you probably seen statistics on like
31:22
women who do play sports in high school and in like the more, the
31:26
further you go, kind of the more success you have in your
31:29
professional career, whatever that might be.
31:31
Post sports I'm talking about, they talk about how almost all
31:36
women in C suites are have played at a varsity level.
31:41
So these opportunities aren't just important for athletic
31:45
careers, right? They're important for building
31:47
skills that carry well over into any kind of job.
31:53
Women's collegiate athletic participation also increased by
31:57
more than 600% in the decades following the passage of Title
32:00
Nine. Title 9 created the pipeline
32:03
that built the NWSL, the WNBAPWHL, and every women's
32:08
professional league that exists today, the 1999 US Women's World
32:13
Cup team. The moment that changed women's
32:15
soccer globally was entirely a Title nine generation.
32:20
Megan Rapinoe, Caitlin Clark, Asia Wilson, Hillary Knight, all
32:24
title, nine daughters. And in 2002, the law was
32:27
officially renamed the Patsy T Mink Equal Opportunity in
32:31
Education Act one month after her death.
32:37
And so kind of looking back at her overall legacy, she served
32:41
in Congress for a total of 12 terms across 2 stints.
32:45
One of the longest serving Asian American lawmakers in history
32:48
ran for president in 1972, the first woman of color to seek a
32:52
major party presidential nomination and remained in
32:55
Congress until her death on September 28th, 2002 from viral
32:59
pneumonia. Posthumously awarded the
33:02
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014, and her legacy lives not
33:08
in stadiums or record books, but in the infrastructure of
33:11
opportunity itself. Yeah, I think, I mean kind of
33:15
already said what really stands out about her contribution,
33:23
excuse me, to where we are. And like I think, like I said
33:28
before, I think there's no greater pivot point or change
33:36
that gets us to where we are now.
33:39
Now, there's still a ton more progress to be made, but at
33:45
least we have kind of that foundation and the numbers sort
33:47
of speak for themselves. Yeah.
33:49
And I also think it's, I mean, we still have not yet elected a
33:52
woman president. Shame on us, but I think it's
33:56
crazy that yeah, was it 72 that she ran for president, which is
34:00
like almost 50 years before it would.
34:02
Even be way ahead. Of considered semi normal to be
34:05
a candidate for president. Right.
34:06
When did Hillary run 2016? So we had.
34:09
A few others. Yeah, yeah, there's been a few,
34:12
but like as a. Realistically a full party
34:14
candidate. So that was 40 years later like
34:19
insane. So she is certainly one that I
34:24
know I've, it's interesting like I knew about Title 9, obviously.
34:28
I didn't know. I didn't.
34:30
I didn't really know either. Yeah.
34:32
And I should. I should.
34:33
So now we know. Now we all know.
34:35
We all know. So we're going to move forward
34:37
into yet another kind of chapter here.
34:39
We're going to pair a couple of pioneers together.
34:43
And this is really two very different stories, but talking
34:49
about or focused on fighting to be taken seriously.
34:53
So now we're in the sort of like post, it's like around the Title
34:59
9 era, right? And we've had you kind of have
35:02
some, some parallel pathing of Gibson and Rudolph happening in
35:06
the mixer here too. So keeping all of that in mind,
35:09
we are going to jump into our story on September 20th, 1973.
35:17
We're in the Houston Astrodome. There are 30,000 people there,
35:22
there are 90 million people watching from home around the
35:27
world around. The world.
35:29
That's a lot of people. Yeah, that's massive.
35:32
And what they're watching is Bobby Riggs, 55 year old, former
35:38
Wimbledon champion and self-proclaimed.
35:42
Self-proclaimed. Why would you self-proclaimed?
35:44
Male chauvinist has spent months publicly declaring that women's
35:50
tennis is inferior. And I'm just going to sidebar
35:53
for a second. But like, what's new?
35:55
Because we still hear this stuff this day and age.
35:58
OK, back to the story. He says that no woman could beat
36:01
a top male player and that women belonged in the kitchen, in the
36:06
bedroom. Yep, he said it.
36:08
Not on the court. Enter Billie Jean King, 29 year
36:15
old from Long Beach, CA walks into that arena carried on a
36:21
golden throne by 4 men. Accepted a live piglet from
36:26
Riggs. I don't really know what that's
36:28
about. We got to get.
36:29
The video on this I think. Find it.
36:32
And then she whooped his ass. Beat him up.
36:36
She beat him in straight sets. They played by like the men's
36:41
rules. So the men play 5 sets in their
36:45
their matches and she beat them 3 three sets in a row.
36:49
We'll get to that in a little bit.
36:50
But the highlight reel of that story, obviously fun and a
36:55
little bit like over the top right and ostentatious doesn't
37:00
really give the full picture of what she had to fight through.
37:03
So Billie Jean was born in 1943, like I said, in Long Beach, CA.
37:10
She picked up a tennis racket at the age of 11.
37:12
And like immediately they knew she was special, right?
37:17
Like she kind of just was one of those kids that had a knack,
37:20
really loved the sport, like that kind of thing.
37:25
Quickly discovered that tennis is a Country Club sport.
37:30
Speaking of affluent sports. Speaking of affluent sports,
37:32
it's very white, it's very wealthy, and it is deeply
37:38
unwelcoming to people who are not in the club, right?
37:42
So we're up against that. She decides she doesn't really
37:46
care. She's like, I, I'm good at
37:48
tennis, I'm going to play tennis.
37:49
So she wins her first Wimbledon in 1966.
37:54
So if you're doing math at home, she's 23 wins Wimbledon, and it
37:58
begins this dominant run for King that spans decades, Right?
38:03
But 39 Grand Slam titles total. Despite that dominance, though,
38:10
women's players at the time were paid a fraction of what the
38:14
men's players were paid. So I think one example of this
38:17
is in 1970 at the Italian Open, the men's champion is paid
38:23
$3500, which is probably a decent amount of money back
38:27
then. The women's champion is paid
38:29
$700.00. So they're literally paid 5
38:31
times more the men are than the women.
38:34
Yeah, or 1/5. And so she decides like I'm, I'm
38:37
not down with this. I'm not going to stand for this.
38:41
I'm bringing in the same people are coming to watch me as as
38:45
they're watching the men, right? And we're at the same level of
38:50
entertainment and skill and whatnot.
38:51
Like we deserve equal pay. Well, imagine being the the
38:55
best, the absolute best at your job and you're getting paid 1/5
38:59
of what some other person who is also good but not great.
39:04
Right? Exactly.
39:06
I mean, I'm sure we've all probably have experienced that
39:08
at some form in our in our jobs. Yeah, we probably have.
39:11
So she's, she's like on this mission now, right?
39:16
Like, not only am I going to be the top tennis player in the
39:19
world, right, Or one of the top tennis players in the world, I
39:22
am also going to fight for equal pay.
39:24
So we're in 1970, right? Right after this Italian Open,
39:28
Billie Jean King and eight other women decide to sign $1.00
39:32
contracts with a fledgling women's tennis tour.
39:38
Basically an open defiance of the establishment kind of tennis
39:43
world, right? And so, as we were laughing
39:47
about this before the Virginia Slim circuit is begun, what?
39:52
Goes together better than tennis and cigarettes.
39:56
Became the foundation of what would become today's Women's
40:01
Tennis Association. So the WTA, we've talked about
40:04
that here. We reference it all the time.
40:07
So King actually formerly formally Co founded the WTA in
40:11
1973. They were like, whoa, smoking is
40:13
bad for you, let's move away from that.
40:16
I actually don't think that was happening yet in 1973.
40:18
But and so with the WT as inception, they created the
40:23
first professional tour designed specifically for women athletes.
40:27
She also at the same time or roughly around the same time, Co
40:32
founded women's sports magazine and the Women's Sports
40:36
Foundation. So she was like, I'm going to go
40:38
media and I'm going to go advocacy infrastructure
40:42
alongside building this like administrative piece here for me
40:49
to be able to play tennis. Because if I can get the stories
40:51
out that are accurate and representative of what's going
40:55
on in women's tennis, and if I have a foundation that is doing
40:59
research and probably doing some lobbying or things like that
41:04
that are able to help open doors like Patsy Mink did, I'm going
41:08
to be that much more successful. Or I should say that the
41:13
organization will. She sort of had this
41:17
understanding right from the start that winning a bunch of
41:21
tennis matches like really didn't matter if you weren't
41:25
reaping the benefit from that. And we're seeing that right now
41:28
with like the WNBACBA, right? They're like, we're freaking
41:31
good and we're not getting paid our worth.
41:33
It, it's, it's we're going to see this a lot with, I think
41:37
with Billie Jean King. This is an ongoing legacy of
41:41
hers. Like it's, Oh yeah, paid out
41:43
billions of dollars to these players.
41:45
And it all started with her at this point in time.
41:48
Right, exactly. So King of course becomes the OR
41:53
is the most prominent vocal advocate for equal prize money
41:56
at Grand Slam events. So Grand Slam is the US Open,
41:59
Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon are are the big ones,
42:04
right? And in 1973, so shortly after
42:08
she founds the WTA like officially or Co founds it
42:12
officially, the US Open became the first Grand Slam event to
42:16
offer equal prize money to men and women.
42:19
And actually it's interesting because tennis has long been a
42:23
sport that has been sort of ahead of the curve from an equal
42:27
pay perspective versus some of the other team sports, right?
42:32
We're, I'm going to mention it here like it would take
42:35
Wimbledon until 2007 and the French Open until 2006 due to in
42:41
large part one of our other pioneers.
42:43
We're going to talk about Venus Williams, but they've been doing
42:47
equal pay. I mean, we just got an equal pay
42:50
piece of legislation for US soccer in 2022.
42:54
So like almost 20 years before tennis was paying their their
42:59
competitors equally regardless of of gender.
43:02
So I think, you know, she she also went through periods of
43:06
like threatening to boycott, similar to Wilma Rudolph, like
43:10
not wanting to show up at that thing, kind of recognizing that
43:12
like she's a draw. There's probably.
43:16
Money to be made. If she's there and so if she
43:19
doesn't show up, she's like, I'm going to leverage.
43:21
That power, Yeah, exactly. I've got this power to to take
43:24
money out of your pockets. Why are you taking money out of
43:26
mine? And so then that leads to the
43:29
what was famously known as and what I described at the
43:32
beginning of this segment is the battle of the sexes.
43:35
And I'm not going to rehash it because I think you kind of got
43:37
the picture. We'll talk more about it if we
43:39
we when we deep dive on Billie Jean King.
43:43
But I just want to repeat that she did wipe the floor with this
43:47
guy and it and it, it was interesting because clearly
43:51
people wanted that spectacle. They were interested.
43:54
And I think there's probably a curiosity of, like, can she back
43:58
it up? And boy, did she.
44:00
Yeah. She did 100%.
44:03
So we sort of get to like full picture for her.
44:10
You know, I already mentioned this.
44:11
So she won 39 Grand Slam titles across singles, double S and
44:15
mixed double, S6 time Wimbledon singles champion, four time U.S.
44:20
Open singles titles. She's arguably one of the best
44:24
to ever play. Now, another challenge that
44:27
Billie Jean has faced is she came out as gay in 1981.
44:31
She was one of the first major professional athletes to do
44:35
that. Like, this was well before it
44:39
was even like safe in a lot of ways to do that and became well
44:46
as a result of that. I should say she lost like
44:49
almost all of her endorsements overnight.
44:51
I think another example though of her a societally just like
44:57
sign of the times, unfortunately, but like the
44:59
bravery to like live unapologetically as yourself in
45:05
a world that you know is going to push back against that and
45:09
you. For a lot of people would be a
45:12
lot easier to just continue to hide that right?
45:16
And she was like, no, that's. Not that's not I mean, she was
45:18
almost 40 at this point. Like you kind of wonder, like,
45:21
why wouldn't you, right? Isn't it just easier?
45:23
And I think she like, it's not. I think that's true for all
45:28
queer people, right? Like to kind of hide a part of
45:31
yourself feels, feels not good. She's, you know, then got gone
45:38
on to be a really prominent LGBTQ advocate, which is great
45:42
'cause we needed more of that representation for the reasons I
45:46
just mentioned. She's been awarded the
45:48
Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2009.
45:52
And she's been named one of the most 100 most important
45:56
Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.
46:01
And I got to add here, she is also the Co founder, strategic
46:05
advisor and advocate for the PWHL.
46:11
And she actually has the MVP trophy is named after her.
46:15
It's the Billie Jean King MVP trophy or award for the best
46:19
player in the league, which I think kind of speaks to her,
46:23
right? Yeah, I think a couple of
46:24
things. One, it was really cool.
46:26
She got to say let's play hockey at one of the finals games we
46:30
went to, which was really fun, but.
46:33
She's around all. As much as she was like a
46:36
dominating force on the court, like the amount of institutions
46:42
that she's leaving behind, like an insane legacy both on and off
46:48
the court, like just crazy to me.
46:50
Yeah, agree, agree. All right, So the next pioneer
46:55
in this chapter, like I said, very different kind of path than
47:00
Billie Jean King, but it is Donna Lopiano, so probably not a
47:07
name that. Yeah, this is new to me.
47:08
Many people know I learned a lot reading up on her and she's an
47:15
administrator. So we're going to talk about
47:17
this again, kind of like Patsy Mink, right?
47:20
Kind of leading, not with athleticism.
47:21
Yeah, with legislation. Yeah.
47:24
Donna Lupiano actually was both. So we'll talk a little bit about
47:28
her back story, but to start us off Donna's, we're going to
47:32
start Donna's story in 1975 S around the time that.
47:37
Title 9. And Billie Jean King is doing
47:39
the equal play K thing. She started the WTA, right?
47:42
There's some momentum, yeah, but we're at the University of
47:45
Texas. The women's athletic program had
47:49
a budget of $57,000 for the whole program for the whole year
48:00
57. $1000 That's not much. The men's side of athletics and
48:05
whatnot is 1,000,000. Yeah, even in even in the 70s.
48:08
Yeah, right. They don't have any
48:10
scholarships. They don't have facilities, at
48:12
least not really worth mentioning, right?
48:15
They don't have a national profile.
48:17
Now think of the University of Texas at Austin like.
48:20
Without a national profile. Without a national profile for
48:23
women sports like they are dominant in volleyball, track
48:28
and field, swimming, I mean basketball to a.
48:31
Degree right now. They are in, I mean they are in
48:34
the Sweet 16 tomorrow. I think so.
48:38
Donna Lopiano arrives as the athletic director that year,
48:44
1975, with a legal pad, a vision and an almost unreasonable
48:50
belief that women's athletics deserved to be taken seriously.
48:56
18 years later, she left behind the most decorated women's
49:00
athletic program in the country, 18 national championships across
49:05
multiple sports, a scholarship infrastructure, and a model that
49:10
every major university would eventually try to replicate.
49:15
She did not just build a program, she built a blueprint
49:19
for how this should be done. So let's go a little bit to her
49:23
origin story. She was born on September 11th,
49:26
1946 in Stamford, CT. She was a gifted multi sport
49:32
athlete. You referenced this before.
49:34
Like she played all the sports, baseball, basketball, softball,
49:37
volleyball. She was often not allowed to
49:40
participate because she was a girl.
49:43
Yeah, right. Girl in the 40s, fifties at this
49:45
point, like probably not allowed to be playing.
49:49
She didn't let the rejection break her like a lot of our
49:52
other pioneers. She was just like, OK, this
49:55
isn't cool. Like, let's go.
49:57
Find. So I'm going to find.
49:58
A way? Yeah, I'm going to find a way.
49:59
Exactly. So she went on to be one of the
50:01
greatest softball players in American history.
50:04
When I was reading about this, I was like, you kind of you just
50:07
like wonder about timing and how like if she had been now, like
50:13
now there's a league. There's like a league she could
50:15
have played in, right. And, and I'm sure that she may
50:19
have those same thoughts, but she is one of the ones that made
50:22
the league like Athletes Unlimited Softball League or the
50:25
professional Baseball League like possible.
50:27
What I think the the important part here is that she
50:31
experienced some of these things first hand and sometimes you
50:34
need someone in administration that has dealt with those type
50:38
of things to in order to make the changes necessary.
50:41
Totally, totally I agree. So she went on to earn a
50:45
doctorate in physical education at the University of Southern
50:48
California. And then in 1975, as we started,
50:52
she was hired as the AD for Texas University.
50:58
University of Texas. Excuse me?
50:59
They would be really mad. They would if you're doing the
51:03
math. She's 29.
51:04
Yeah. So she's very young to be taking
51:07
on if 3037 was young, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
51:11
Really young. And so like we said, like she's
51:14
taking over this program that it has $57,000 to millions of
51:19
dollars on the men's side, $57,000 for the women.
51:22
No athletic scholarships exist. Title 9, of course, like Alex
51:26
mentioned, had passed in 1972. But as with any anything, right,
51:32
any, it just takes time to infiltrate and to actually the
51:37
societal change on things like that, as we talked about with
51:41
segregation, right? It just takes more time for
51:44
people to sort of change the way that they're thinking about
51:47
things. So she gets there and
51:51
immediately begins pushing for scholarships, elite coaches
51:55
facility. She's like, we need all of these
51:56
things, right? We cannot like expect this to be
52:02
successful without this infrastructure.
52:06
She, of course, faced significant internal resistance
52:09
from University of administration.
52:12
I'm sure it's some of the same arguments I hear when I talk to
52:15
people about women's sports today of like that don't
52:17
generate any money, right, and things like that.
52:22
What's interesting in a tie back to Patsy Mink is Donna kept a
52:27
copy of Title 9 on her desk and she used it as both kind of a
52:31
legal tool, like, hey, I've got legislation behind me to say
52:35
that we need to be doing this and just a kind of a moral
52:39
argument, right? So.
52:43
It's really interesting. I think the one thing, and we
52:45
probably, I don't know if we have the answer for this, but
52:46
like how was Title 9 enforced? Because it seemed like some of
52:51
these should not be as much of a fight.
52:53
Yeah, but it probably wasn't. Probably wasn't really enforced.
52:56
No, and I actually think she even in some of my reading up on
53:00
her that was part of her challenge was like there's there
53:04
wasn't really like the support from the federal government
53:08
level, the federal level to go into schools and say you're not
53:13
enforcing this. And she actually has now become
53:16
like post her athletic director days, she runs a foundation or
53:22
research association or something where she's done some
53:24
consulting where she and and she'll help support ensuring
53:29
that it is being used appropriately.
53:33
So we talked about the 18 national championships in 18
53:37
years, right, Dominant programs. We talked about in swimming and
53:41
dive, track and field, softball, volleyball, tennis, basketball,
53:45
golf. She grew that women's athletic
53:48
budget from that $57,000 to over $4 million in 18 years.
53:55
And she was able to establish full scholarship programs across
54:00
women's sports, which gave female athletes the same
54:03
foundational support as their male counterparts.
54:06
And she was also able to recruit and retain elite coaches as a
54:11
result of this, which then draws athletes, right?
54:14
There's kind of a flywheel, flywheel that happens there.
54:18
And Texas athletics really became the national model,
54:21
right, for how these programs should be structured in the wake
54:25
of title, right? How you kind of have to, to your
54:29
point. And so this proof of concept
54:31
that she created of fully investing in women breed
54:36
success, right? Like she proved that out over 18
54:40
years. Yeah.
54:41
I mean, we just talked about this last week on our podcast
54:43
like you invest and look what happens like every time and we
54:48
have this is 50 years ago this started.
54:52
Yep, we're still. Talking about it, We're still
54:53
talking about it. So in 1992, she left Texas to
55:00
become the CEO of the Women's Sports Foundation.
55:03
That sounds familiar. It's because I just mentioned
55:05
that Billie Jean Camp Co founded the Women's Sports Foundation in
55:09
1973 ish 74. So she served as CEO for the
55:15
Women's Sports Foundation for 15 years, really transforming the
55:19
WSF into the most prominent policy and research voice for
55:24
women's sports across the country.
55:26
So it became one of the leading national, she became, excuse me,
55:29
I should say, one of the leading national experts on Title 9
55:32
compliance and enforcement. So she actually is probably the
55:36
one that helps, has has written process and policy to help
55:41
enforce it, right. She testified before Congress,
55:44
consulted with universities and pushed universities to stop
55:47
treating Title 9 as a liability, which a lot of them were saying
55:51
it was at the time, and start treating it as an opportunity.
55:56
She's like, look, we use this, we leverage it, we grow, we
56:00
breed success. For those of you not in sales,
56:03
opportunity means dollar signs. Opportunity.
56:06
Usually dollar signs in our society, yes.
56:11
So then she went on after that 15 years at Women's Sports
56:15
Foundation to found sports management resources in 2007 to
56:20
consult directly with athletic departments on gender equity
56:23
strategy. And she has spent decades
56:26
obviously arguing that the gap between men's and women's
56:29
athletic investment is not inevitable, that it's a choice
56:34
and it can be unmade. So she's been inducted now into
56:41
the National Sports Hall of Fame and the Women's Sports
56:44
Foundation International Women's Sports Hall of Fame.
56:46
That is a lot. She's recipient of numerous
56:50
lifetime achievement awards. As you can imagine, she the,
56:55
like I, like we've said before, the infrastructure she built at
56:57
Texas really is the blueprint that so many other universities
57:03
and, and really has set the baseline for Power 5
57:06
institutions, right? And then her tenure, like we
57:11
just said, like really proved that when women are properly
57:17
resourced and properly supported, they are successful,
57:21
right? And quite frankly, that's not
57:24
always the case with men's programs.
57:26
Yeah. It's not always the case with
57:29
women's programs, but she was kind of again, like that proof
57:31
of concept that you can't just claim that like they're not good
57:35
and you're not giving them the opportunities that are
57:38
equitable. Yeah, it's it's heartbreaking
57:41
down a door, but part pouring the foundation like for
57:47
everything we have right now. I've I don't know what she looks
57:50
like. Imagine her standing next to a
57:52
concrete machine, just like we're just going to put.
57:53
This down that kind of food. Real nice and it's going to grow
57:57
from here. So, you know, we've, we learned
58:03
so much. And just like hearing about
58:05
these 655 women, yeah, five women we've talked about here,
58:10
we have. Six more, six more to talk
58:13
about. To bring to you we're gonna do
58:15
that in a special Part 2 yeah we'll pull back some of the
58:20
themes that we've talked about here thread those through the
58:23
narratives and we're gonna launch ahead sort of into like
58:27
the now we've got some of our featured characters who are
58:34
gonna be born in more of like the. 70s or you're gonna start
58:37
to edge into that more modern era.
58:39
Yeah, more modern era names. You've probably heard we've
58:42
mentioned Venus Williams already.
58:43
We're gonna talk a little bit about Simone Biles, Megan
58:46
Rapinoe. Yeah, I.
58:47
Mean for the for the people who are our age, ish.
58:49
There are gonna be people that you heard of growing up like.
58:53
Yep, your entire childhood. Yeah, absolutely.
58:56
So we're excited to bring Part 2 to you guys.
58:58
We're probably gonna do a little like special out of cycle drop
59:02
for that just so we can get it to you a little bit quicker.
59:06
But yeah, let us know your thoughts.
59:09
Yeah, I this is I almost like doing this a little bit more
59:13
than some of the headlines sometimes because I love just
59:15
this is like a history lesson and I.
59:17
Love history. So it is this is this.
59:19
Is fun for me. All right, Well, we will talk to
59:24
you all next time. Yeah, be sure to follow us RTG
59:27
under score pod on Threads and Instagram, RTG pod.com for our
59:32
website. Make sure to subscribe to the
59:36
Sub Stack if you want a Friday morning kind of just rehash and
59:40
what we talked about, things coming up throughout the
59:42
weekend, stuff like that. Till next time.
59:46
Bye. Bye.