The Door Part Two: Ann Meyers Drysdale, Lisa Leslie, and the Doors They Kicked Open

In This Episode

• Ann Meyers Drysdale becomes the first woman to sign an NBA free-agent contract in 1979, walking into Indiana Pacers training camp and competing before building a pioneering broadcasting career
• Lisa Leslie joins the WNBA’s inaugural 1997 season over better-paying overseas offers, wins three MVPs, and dunks the league’s first-ever dunk
• Venus Williams’s 2006 op-ed on prize money inequality directly leads to Wimbledon equalizing pay between men and women the following year
• Megan Rapinoe helps lead the USWNT’s equal pay lawsuit to a $24 million settlement with U.S. Soccer in 2022
• Simone Biles withdraws from the Tokyo Olympics citing the twisties, then returns at Paris 2024 to win three golds, reframing what athlete boundary-setting looks like
• Part two of our trailblazers series closes with Caitlin Clark’s impact on WNBA attendance and viewership, standing on the foundation these six women built — her rookie season alone pushed Indiana Fever attendance from under 5,000 to over 17,000 a game

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We’re on vacation this week, so instead of the normal weekly rundown, we’re picking back up on a series we started in episode 13. That one was called “The Door,” and it covered the early trailblazers of women’s sports: Wilma Rudolph, Althea Gibson, Billie Jean King, Donna Lopiano. This time we’re moving into more recent history, names a lot more of you will recognize.

The thread connecting all of it is the same one from part one. Every woman in this lineup got handed a set of terms, a locked door, a ceiling somebody else built, and she renegotiated them anyway. Some knew exactly what they were up against. Some, honestly, may not have even realized there was a door there to begin with. They just kept going.

Six athletes, one theme. Let’s get into it.

Ann Meyers Drysdale: the tryout that reframed what was possible

• Born in 1955 in San Diego, one of 11 children, in a family where basketball was already in the genes (her brother also played in the NBA).
• Starred at Sonora High School in La Habra, California, and in 1974 became the first woman to receive a full athletic scholarship to UCLA, right on the heels of Title IX.
• Four-time Kodak All-American, the first player of either gender to earn that four times. Led UCLA to the 1978 AIAW national championship and was named national player of the year.
• Won an Olympic silver medal in 1976 at age 18, and was also a gifted volleyball and track athlete.
• In 1979, the Indiana Pacers signed her to a $50,000 free agent contract (about $230,000 today) and invited her to training camp, the first time an NBA team had done that for a woman. She didn’t make the roster, but she competed.
• Went on to play for the New Jersey Gems of the Women’s Basketball League, then built a pioneering broadcasting career across NBC, CBS, ABC, and ESPN, covering NBA and college basketball and, through her marriage to Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale, baseball too.
• Joined the Phoenix Suns front office, leading decision-making for a men’s sports organization well before that was common.
• Inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993 (one of the first women enshrined), the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame’s inaugural class in 1999, and named one of the top 15 players in women’s basketball history by ESPN.

“The sports world, of course, laughed. The Pacers didn’t. And Ann Meyers walked into that training camp and looked every NBA player in the eye and competed.” — Caitlin

“I think the big thing going into this that everyone needs to realize is this wasn’t a stunt. This was because she was that good.” — Alex

Lisa Leslie: building the WNBA from scratch

• Born July 7, 1972, in Gardena, California, raised primarily by her mother, a long-haul truck driver, in the Compton/Inglewood area alongside the Williams sisters.
• Six foot five, with a fully developed all-around game (footwork, ball handling, passing, rebounding) rather than just size. Once scored 101 points in a single half at Morningside High School; the other team left at halftime.
• Four-time All-American at USC, then won Olympic gold in Atlanta in 1996, the moment she calls the catalyst for the league’s founding.
• In 1997, one of the first eight players signed to the brand-new WNBA, joining the Los Angeles Sparks over more established and better-paying offers overseas.
• Twelve-season career: two WNBA championships, three MVP awards (2001, 2004, 2006), and the first dunk in league history in 2002.
• Built a modeling and business career alongside her playing career, understanding personal brand before that was a common athlete strategy.
• Won four Olympic gold medals total (1996, 2000, 2004, 2008), the most decorated women’s basketball player in Olympic history at the time.
• Retired in 2009. Inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015, named to the WNBA’s 25th and 20th anniversary teams, and had her number retired by the Sparks. We cover the league Leslie helped build every week in our WNBA episode archive.

“Lisa Leslie was like, no, I’m going to stay here and I’m going to help prove the point that women’s professional basketball belongs here in America.” — Caitlin

“You decide, I’m gonna take a chance on this thing that’s not really proven, I’m not gonna get paid as much, all because I wanna stand on principle, basically.” — Alex

Venus Williams: the op-ed that changed Wimbledon

• Born in Compton, California. Her father, Richard Williams, taught himself tennis from instructional videos and started coaching Venus and Serena on public courts before Venus turned five, a sport that, at the time, was not built for poor Black families.
• Turned pro at 14 in 1994, immediately known for the power in her serve, at one point regularly exceeding 120 miles per hour.
• U.S. Open finalist at 17 in 1997. Went on to win seven Grand Slam singles titles (five at Wimbledon, two at the U.S. Open) and became the first Black woman since Althea Gibson in 1958 to be ranked world number one, in 2002.
• Won Olympic singles gold at the 2000 Sydney Games plus four doubles golds with Serena.
• Wimbledon did not pay men and women equally until 2007. Venus wrote an op-ed in the Times of London in 2006 laying out the data on ticket sales and audience interest, and the campaign that followed led directly to Wimbledon’s decision to equalize prize money the next year.
• Diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease, in 2011, and has continued competing at the elite level since. She turned 46 this week, and she and Serena are paired up again at Wimbledon doubles for the first time in years.
• Built businesses outside tennis, including interior design firm V Starr and activewear brand EleVen. Inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2021.

“She essentially penned an op-ed in a London newspaper that said, hey, I’ve got receipts. Here’s the data. You need to pay us equally.” — Caitlin

“Venus was already good. She didn’t have to pick any fights with anyone.” — Alex

Megan Rapinoe and the USWNT equal pay fight

• On March 8, 2019, three months before that year’s World Cup, the U.S. Women’s National Team filed an equal pay lawsuit against U.S. Soccer.
• The pay gap was stark. In the 2018 Men’s World Cup, the total prize pool was $400 million; France’s men won it and took home $38 million. In the 2019 Women’s World Cup, the total pool was $30 million; the U.S. women won it and took home $4 million, about 13% of that pool versus France’s 9.5% of a much larger one.
• The case settled with U.S. Soccer in February 2022 for $24 million total: $22 million in back pay and $2 million toward a post-career fund. The team had sought $66.7 million.
• Rapinoe was central to making the fight public, not just legal, from press conferences to the “equal pay” chants that broke out across the 2019 World Cup.
• The legal blueprint the team built is now being referenced by other national federations pursuing their own equal pay fights.

“She’s no stranger to standing up for what she believes in. She knew there would be vitriol in her direction, but that’s not going to make her back down.” — Caitlin

Simone Biles: the right to say no

• Heading into the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Biles had 30 world medals (23 gold) and was already the most decorated gymnast in history, man or woman.
• She withdrew from the team final and individual events, citing the twisties, a loss of spatial orientation mid-air that makes landing dangerous. Reaction split hard between support and criticism at the time.
• She came back at the Paris 2024 Games and won three gold medals (team, all-around, vault) and a silver on floor, finishing just behind Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade in what both hosts called one of the best displays of sportsmanship they’d seen at the Olympics.
• Her Tokyo decision is now framed as a boundary-setting moment for how athletes, and especially young girls, think about mental health and performance, a contrast to the “compete through anything” example set by gymnasts like Kerri Strug in 1996.
• Current career totals: 11 Olympic medals and 30 world medals, arguably the most decorated gymnast ever.

“An athlete’s body and mind are not someone else’s property.” — Caitlin

“The real courage is to say, I don’t need this, this is the more important thing here.” — Alex

Caitlin Clark’s impact on WNBA viewership and attendance

• Clark entered the WNBA in 2024 as one of the most anticipated draft picks in years, joining the Indiana Fever.
• The Fever’s total attendance for the entire 2023 season was 81,000. In Clark’s rookie year, they surpassed that in the first five home games. Average home attendance jumped from under 5,000 to over 17,000 per game.
• Games had to be relocated to larger arenas, including the Washington Mystics moving a game to the Wizards’ venue.
• League-wide attendance in 2024 hit about 2.3 million, the highest in 22 years, up nearly 50% year over year. The 2024 WNBA All-Star Game drew 3.4 million viewers, up from a previous record of 1.4 million set in 2003. Merchandise sales were up 601% from 2023.
• We’re careful to note Clark didn’t build the league’s momentum alone. Players like Lisa Leslie, Dawn Staley, Cynthia Cooper, Cheryl Miller, Tina Thompson, and Sheryl Swoopes built the foundation she’s playing on top of.
• Heading into this season, there’s a genuinely complicated narrative forming around how she’s officiated and treated on the court, and how much of the attention around her is healthy for the league versus just noise.

“It is undeniable that she put more butts in seats.” — Caitlin

Every woman in this lineup got handed a version of the same negotiation: here are your terms, here’s the ceiling we built for you. Every one of them refused to accept it as final. Some slammed the door open, some widened the doorway, and at least one, by Alex’s read, may not have even known the door was locked in the first place. Either way, that’s the through line from Althea Gibson in the 1950s to Simone Biles in Paris in 2024, and it’s worth watching for who does the same thing next. We dig into more of this history in our women’s sports business coverage.

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Full Transcript Transcript is computer generated and may contain errors.

Intro

Caitlin: The sports world, of course, laughed. The Pacers didn’t. And Ann Meyers walked into that training camp and looked every NBA player in the eye. Hi, I’m Caitlin.

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex. And this is Raising the Game, a women’s sports podcast about the primetime performers, the business behind the athletes in the leagues, and what the growth of women’s sports means for the next generation of women’s athletes.

We are here, episode 26. This is a special edition episode. We are on vacation this week, so recording this in place of our normal episode.

Caitlin: Yes.

Alex: We will be going back to episode 13, I believe was the last time we did this. And why don’t we just take our dog’s collar off here.

Episode 13 was the last time we did this, and we called that episode “The Door.” I think the recurring theme with these, we’re going to talk about women’s athletes throughout the history of women’s sports and athletics, and the kind of common theme there was knocking on the door, opening the door, and now breaking down the door.

Caitlin: All of the different things and the stepping stones that we’ve seen from various women in sports history that have made what we experience today from a women’s sports perspective possible. You’ve also heard me refer to it as trailblazers or pioneers. We’ll use that interchangeably, but the metaphor that we anchored on throughout this is: let’s not talk about the glass ceiling, because there’s some implication there, but let’s talk about this door, and what opportunity are we opening a door to? So we’ll drive that theme throughout as we hit part two of our trailblazers focus.

Alex: We’re kind of starting to step into more of the modern era. So some of our younger listeners will know some of these names.

Caitlin: Maybe have heard a few of these. Whereas last time I think it was maybe a little more, I know I learned a lot in the last one about names I knew, but things they did that I didn’t know, and then even names that I didn’t know. Donna Lopiano, I know about Title IX, but I didn’t really know the name Patsy Mink. Althea Gibson, Wilma Rudolph, and Billie Jean King were all part of our first episode around this. Do we have that episode number?

Alex: Yeah, I think it’s 13.

Caitlin: Oh yeah, you said that, sorry. Okay, so yes, we can go back and reference that. But as Alex said, we’re gonna move into a little bit more of the modern history. I’d say this first one overlaps a bit with some of the folks we just mentioned from a timeline perspective, and a lot of this is going to be basketball, but we have some soccer mixed in, some gymnastics, tennis. Very timely for right now, so we’re ready to dive in.

Alex: Let’s kick it off.

Ann Meyers Drysdale and the 1979 Pacers tryout

Caitlin: All right, so we are going to start this part two talking about Ann Meyers Drysdale. If you’re not familiar with WNBA or basketball history and lore, she was even pre-WNBA days. You may not know her as a player, you may know her as a broadcaster. She did broadcast for both basketball, usually NBA and college basketball, and then also baseball. But let’s talk a little bit about her story.

So we’re gonna go back a little journey to 1979. The Indiana Pacers of the NBA signed a woman to a free agent contract and invited her to training camp. Her name was Ann Meyers. You’d probably assume she was 24 years old. She had already been a four-time All-American, an Olympic silver medalist, and was the first woman to receive a full athletic scholarship to UCLA. So this was right around the time, just past Title IX. The sports world, of course, laughed.

Alex: Yep.

Caitlin: The Pacers didn’t. And Ann Meyers walked into that training camp and looked every NBA player in the eye and competed.

Alex: Yeah, I think the big thing going into this that everyone needs to realize is this wasn’t a stunt. This was because she was that good.

Caitlin: Yes, and we’ll talk a little bit about that. I think we talked about stunts, or something close to it, when we talked about Billie Jean King and the Battle of the Sexes. She was asked to be there because she was really good, and the Pacers genuinely believed she could be an asset to their organization.

Alex: And I think you’re gonna lay out all of those qualifications here coming up.

Caitlin: So let’s go all the way back. That tryout was definitely a pioneering moment, something that had never happened before, and quite frankly I don’t think has happened since. Let’s talk about the qualification that got her into that gymnasium with the Pacers.

Ann Meyers was born in August 1955 in San Diego, California. She’s a California girl. She was one of 11 children, so you can imagine you just naturally become a competitor because there’s 11 of you and you’re always fighting and playing. Her brother also played in the NBA, so basketball was kind of in the family genes. Even from a really early age, she showed extraordinary talent. She actually played almost exclusively as a youth player on boys’ teams. Again, this is pre-Title IX, so there isn’t the opportunity for her otherwise.

She starred at Sonora High School in La Habra, California, becoming the most recruited female athlete in the country. Then in 1974, as we mentioned in the intro, she became the first woman to receive a full scholarship to UCLA. Right after Title IX, it’s interesting to ponder whether she would have received that scholarship had Title IX not been passed. I love this series because while each of these women played their own role, there’s such an interlock between what each of them did, and how that opened the door. Ann Meyers’ door might not have been open had Patsy Mink not passed that legislation.

Alex: It’s like this weird thing, I don’t even know what you call it, but it’s like she was a lock to essentially get a full athletic scholarship, but wouldn’t have without Title IX. Absolutely qualified, but would not have without Title IX. It’s hard to wrap my head around how that could not be there, given how qualified she was.

Caitlin: Yeah, and I think something we’ll explore a couple times in this episode is forcing the narrative and fighting for a place, and how women are capable of holding that space when they’re given the opportunity. In a lot of instances they are actively being boxed out of those opportunities. When she got the opportunity, moving ahead to her college career, she snatched it.

Alex: Took it.

Caitlin: Four-time Kodak All-American at UCLA, the first player, male or female, to ever achieve four-time All-American. She led UCLA to the 1978 AIAW National Championship, so pre-NCAA folks. She was named player of the year in 1978. She averaged a double-double in points and assists, considered a very complete and dominant player at the time. Prior to that collegiate championship in ‘78, she played in the 1976 Olympics for the U.S. national team as an 18-year-old.

Alex: Wow.

Caitlin: Won a silver medal. What was also remarkable about Ann Meyers Drysdale was that she was a multi-sport athlete, which is so uncommon.

Alex: We might’ve talked about this last episode. That is not common anymore.

Caitlin: Yes, and she was actually quite gifted at volleyball and track. It’s really interesting to think about the benefits of training for those different sports and how that may have given her an advantage as a basketball player.

So moving ahead, now we’re getting into that NBA tryout. She’s wrapping up her collegiate career, wins the championship, and it’s kind of like, okay, now what do I do? There were opportunities, but it was kind of like, where are these? She could have gone and played in the Women’s Basketball League, the WBL, but she got this offer from the Pacers. Could she have played it safe, or would she go do this thing that people are laughing at, but she got invited?

Alex: And?

Caitlin: She was like, I’m going to go, I’m going to give it a try.

Alex: I think it’s a thing we’ll see with some of our other people on this list as well.

Caitlin: Totally. So 1979, the Indiana Pacers extend a free agent contract to her, $50,000. I did do a conversion: that’s about $230,000 in today’s dollars, which, in the current NBA, nobody’s getting paid under a million dollars, but still pretty impressive. She was inked to a contract to go do this tryout. The signing, as you can imagine, generated massive media attention, and a lot of skepticism, dismissal, and downright disparagement.

Alex: I think we can all imagine this in 1979 and what that probably looked like.

Caitlin: And I think in some pockets we still experience that now. It’s still kind of deemed, you know, when Sabrina Ionescu competed against Steph Curry in the three-point contest a couple of years back, there were certainly pockets who were like, why is a woman involved here? And she almost beat him.

Alex: I think Kendall Coyne Schofield was at the all-star skills competition too.

Caitlin: Yes, all-star. And she did win that. Anyway, Meyers had this choice: do I go do this, do I go put myself into an uncomfortable situation where there’s going to be questions to answer, there’s going to be derision, or do I just kind of mind my own business? I think we’ve learned through this series that none of these women chose to mind their own business. In fact, they oftentimes chose to stand up for themselves and take the opportunities. So she did. She did not make the team, but the tryout really reframed what was considered possible. No one was sitting there thinking she was at the same level as these men’s players, but the Pacers saw that she could provide them an advantage.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: Right, with her play, because she was exceptional at what she did.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: And so she made this opening for us to say, do women belong in this conversation of playing at the highest level? That’s actually probably an early-stage conversation that sparks some of the forming of a professional league for women that we now see as the WNBA.

So after the tryout, not making the Pacers, she signed with the New Jersey Gems of the Women’s Basketball League, the first precursor to the WNBA, which ran from 1978 to 1981. Didn’t stick around very long, but that was the option available. I think there were six teams, pretty small, but you got to play. After she’s done playing, she finishes up her career pretty quickly, even though she graduated college in ‘78 and would have played for maybe three years after. She’s still in her 20s, and she’s like, I love sports, I love basketball, I’m going to go into broadcasting. She became a pioneering analyst and commentator for both men’s and women’s basketball. She worked for all the major networks: NBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN. She primarily covered NBA and college basketball, but then got into baseball by way of her husband.

Alex: Don Drysdale.

Caitlin: We’ll get to that in just a second. What I think is interesting is her credibility in this space was built on her expertise. When you heard her commentating, doing the analyzing at the desk, she could do that because she had played at the highest level. She was very good at what she did, and she gained legitimacy in a space that was primarily dominated by men at the time because she knew what she was talking about.

Alex: And it’s still very much dominated, though I think we’re seeing more and more now, especially with the WNBA, one or two games a week where you might see a woman commentating.

Caitlin: Or a woman actually doing the analysis. Oftentimes they now put women into the host role, which is pretty common. This really young woman was doing this in the 80s.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: Which is really impressive, and she’s doing it for men’s sports, which is also a layer to her credentials.

Alex: You have to be extremely credentialed to be able to talk and have the people listening, who are most likely men, understand that you know what you’re talking about and be willing to listen.

Caitlin: Exactly. So to round out Ann Meyers Drysdale’s legacy: she was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993, one of the first women ever enshrined. She was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999 as part of its inaugural class, and named one of the top 15 players in the history of women’s basketball by ESPN. She married Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale in 1986, and has been a prominent figure in both basketball and baseball ever since. She also joined the front office of the Phoenix Suns, using her experience and credibility to gain a front office role and lead decision-making for a men’s sports organization at a time when that wasn’t common. When you really think back on that legacy, most women in sports media, women in front office leadership for men’s sports organizations, and women now playing in the WNBA owe a lot to the opportunity Ann Meyers helped create.

Alex: Yeah, I think when we bring it back to this idea of the door, obviously she was instrumental in opening it, widening it. When I was doing the prep for this, I was kind of thinking, did she even know there was a door?

Caitlin: Did anyone tell her?

Alex: She just kind of kept cruising. Not saying it was easy, but she just went, went, went.

Caitlin: That’s so true. Again, like a theme of, do I even understand that there’s a barrier here? I feel like we talked about that with Wilma Rudolph, who had all of these setbacks and just kept saying, get out of my way, whether it was polio or scarlet fever or sprained ankles. She just was like, no, that’s not gonna stop me.

Lisa Leslie and the founding of the WNBA

Caitlin: All right, so that’s Ann Meyers Drysdale to kick off our part two. We’re going to move to probably one of the most recognizable names, faces, legacies in women’s professional basketball, very timely as we celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the WNBA this year: Lisa Leslie.

Let’s start in 1997. The WNBA didn’t quite exist yet, it was starting to form up, right before the inaugural season. They had a brand, a broadcast deal, ready to go, but no history, no culture, no proof that anyone’s going to come watch these ladies. Lisa Leslie was one of the first eight players to sign to a team. She signed with the Los Angeles Sparks. She’s 25 years old, fresh off an Olympic gold medal in Atlanta in the ‘96 Olympics. She could have gone and played professional ball anywhere she wanted.

Alex: A little bit more money into it.

Caitlin: The European leagues and leagues overseas were a lot more established and tended to be a little ahead in giving women opportunities to participate. Lisa Leslie was like, no, I’m going to stay here and I’m going to help prove the point that women’s professional basketball belongs here in America.

Alex: Imagine you’re in your early twenties, you have an opportunity to go overseas and make a decent amount of money.

Caitlin: And do your thing.

Alex: And you decide, I’m gonna take a chance on this thing that’s not really proven, I’m not gonna get paid as much, all because I wanna stand on principle, basically.

Caitlin: Exactly, and that’s what Lisa Leslie did. That legacy turned into 12 seasons, two WNBA championships, three MVP awards. She most famously had the first dunk in league history. What’s really cool about Lisa Leslie is that not only was she a phenomenal basketball player, she understood, before many of the rest of us did, that she needed to figure out how to commercialize herself so the league could grow, so she could get paid, so the people coming after her could benefit too. She understood the idea of personal brand before we were talking about that concept. She took on modeling as part of her career. She’s a mother, a businesswoman, a broadcaster. When we think about her impact, she’s really one of the primary reasons we have the WNBA as it is today.

So let’s back up and give a little of her history. She was born on July 7, 1972, the same year as Title IX, in Gardena, California. She grew up in the Compton/Inglewood area alongside the Williams sisters, raised primarily by her mother, who was a long-haul truck driver working crazy hours to provide for her family. Lisa Leslie is six foot five, a very tall woman, especially for the time, but she had developed a technically complete game. She wasn’t just a tall body you threw the ball to and hoped she’d drop it in the hoop. She was exceptionally gifted in her footwork, ball handling, shooting, passing, and rebounding. That separated her, on top of the natural advantage of being 6’5”.

One funny story from her youth days: she started at Morningside High School and scored 101 points in one game, in the first half.

Alex: Did you have teammates?

Caitlin: The other team actually left at halftime.

Alex: Yeah, it was a waste of time.

Caitlin: She was recruited from high school to USC, University of Southern California, where she became a four-time All-American. In 1996, she won that Olympic gold medal, which really was the catalyzing point for the WNBA. Fast forward to the inaugural season: she signs with the Los Angeles Sparks, and the league at the time launched with eight teams and a broadcast deal with ESPN, and maybe NBC too. Now we have 15 teams and a much larger broadcast deal, but this was the groundwork.

She could have gone and played overseas, a very secure option, similar to Meyers Drysdale, but she chose to take the hard path.

Alex: Right.

Caitlin: And when you think about the early days of the WNBA, they were hard.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: I don’t think it was really that glamorous to be a player in the early days, but somehow they made it look glamorous. We talked in our last episode about that anniversary game between the Sparks and the Liberty, the first game ever played, and they had Lisa Leslie at the desk with Rebecca Lobo, showing footage of them walking through the tunnel in the early days.

Alex: Early days tunnel things.

Caitlin: They made it what they wanted it to be.

Alex: I think it’s really interesting, obviously one player doesn’t necessarily make or break a league, but if she and one or two others had decided to go overseas instead, what happens to the WNBA?

Caitlin: Yeah, I don’t think it starts in 1997. Now she’s in the W, a couple years in, and this is really where she starts to hit her stride, the league starting to build some momentum too. Lisa Leslie has three WNBA MVP awards, 2001, 2004, 2006, in her prime years. Two back-to-back WNBA championships in 2001 and 2002. In 2002, the famous dunk in a game. What’s really interesting is that drew more eyeballs to women’s professional basketball than sustained, successful performance by these women.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: I find that so interesting, and it’s probably too much for us to get into on this podcast, but I’d challenge our listeners to think through it, because it’s true also with someone like Caitlin Clark. She has this crazy range on her three-point shot.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: And somehow that skill draws in a different set of eyeballs than someone who is extremely consistent, executes the game at a really high level, but doesn’t have all the flash. Why is it that we need the flash, and why can’t we embrace and respect the really consistent play of someone who is exceptional at their craft? I’ll leave that as a question for today’s episode, but we’ll probably weave some of that through future episodes.

She also won four Olympic gold medals in this time, all back to back: ‘96 was the jumping-off point, then 2000, 2004, and 2008. Easily the most decorated women’s basketball player in Olympic history at the time. As she’s doing this, she’s also building a modeling career. That’s also radical when you think about how women are socialized to think about their bodies, and for her to step out and say, I like how I look, that was a different model than what a lot of people saw at the time.

Alex: For those of you who were not alive during the late 90s or very young in the early 2000s, models at that time were not built like Lisa Leslie whatsoever. It was called heroin chic, or whatever you want to call it.

Caitlin: And probably mostly white.

Alex: Mostly white, under a hundred pounds, very tiny.

Caitlin: And now you’re talking about an athlete, six-five, Black.

Alex: It was not so insane that she was able to make that happen.

Caitlin: Right, and I think she understood that visibility was what created viability. If we can create views, we create a way for this to be sustained, and it’s really interesting to think about that now in today’s age of social media. People run businesses off of that concept: if I can create enough views, I can do this for my career. Just as a side note, we’re not career podcasters.

Alex: No, we’re not.

Caitlin: But it’s interesting to think about how early she was to that thinking, using the media available to her at the time.

So wrapping up this section thinking about her as this “league builder” persona: not only was Lisa Leslie exceptional on the court, with this diversification in modeling and other things, she made herself incredibly accessible as a player. She felt strongly, and continues to, about showing up, connecting with fans, mentoring players in the league right now. She loves to give back, but she also understands the connection that giving back brings to a brand, and how people think of how you make them feel is a big part of why they’ll tune in and listen to what you’re saying. I have a ton of respect for her, how classy she is, how she carries herself, and what a groundbreaker she’s been on so many levels.

Alex: Yeah, for sure.

Caitlin: All right, Lisa retired in 2009 after 12 seasons, one of the longest active careers in WNBA history at the time. She could have left a couple of times for something more lucrative, but chose to stay and believed in building the league. She’s been doing broadcasting and analyst work since, has been an advocate for the CBA negotiations we’ve seen in the last two rounds, and her investment in the overall health of the league hasn’t stopped since she retired. She’s never outwardly seemed to have an ego about the growth these players are now getting paid for. She just seems genuinely happy that we’re finally here.

Alex: You get a lot of players who are like, I was there, pay me, help me out. She is just not like that at all.

Caitlin: Right. To wrap this section up, she was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015, named to the WNBA’s top 25 and top 20 anniversary teams, and the Los Angeles Sparks retired her number nine, one of only a handful of players in league history to have their number retired. When you think about the names we talk about a lot now, an A’ja Wilson, a Breanna Stewart, a Brittney Griner, Lisa Leslie really paved the lane for where those players play now. And frankly, she helped open that door they’ve now been able to walk through. In 2024, Caitlin Clark joins the league. When we talk about Clark, it’s important to remember people like Lisa Leslie, because she planted the seeds and fought for those seeds to stay alive, and Caitlin Clark represents the harvest of all of that work.

Alex: Yep.

Caitlin: We’d be remiss not to give credit to players like Leslie, like Rebecca Lobo, like Dawn Staley, Cynthia Cooper, Cheryl Miller, Tina Thompson, Sheryl Swoopes, to understand and honor the choice these women made to play and stay.

Alex: Yeah, and I think it’s really interesting, it’s like when you win a marathon or whatever type of thing you like to do, and you win, nobody sees the preparation, the hard times that went into that. So you see someone like Caitlin Clark, who has benefited the WNBA greatly, but she came in at a point where you didn’t see the players who really helped build it.

Caitlin: Who could ball out. If you wanna go watch some really good basketball players, go watch some of the early WNBA players. I think it’s really cool, another nod to the 30th anniversary, that in between some of the games they’ll play old footage. I love it.

Venus Williams and equal pay at Wimbledon

Caitlin: All right, we’re gonna move away from basketball for a hot second. We’ll come back to that. We’re gonna talk tennis, and we’re gonna talk about a Williams sister, but not probably the one you think we’re gonna talk about. We’re gonna talk about Venus Williams. This is obviously very timely: as you’re listening to this, Venus and Serena may have already played a first-round match as a doubles wild card. They’re back paired up at Wimbledon for the first time in a number of years. Wimbledon has big historic significance, in particular for Venus.

Alex: Let’s do it.

Caitlin: So Wimbledon, believe it or not, did not pay women equally until 2007.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: That changed in large part because of Venus Williams. She essentially penned an op-ed in a London newspaper that said, hey, I’ve got receipts, here’s the data, you need to pay us equally. She was able to articulate that in a way that put the message out there effectively. To really understand why that moment mattered and landed the way it did, you have to roll it back to the start, to Compton, California, where Richard Williams, the Williams sisters’ father, had this plan for his two daughters. We can do something here the world hasn’t seen before.

Alex: I think we saw this a little bit already, a connection to the Wilma Rudolph story. Her mom wasn’t taking no for an answer either.

Caitlin: Right, right, she had kids massaging the legs and was like, now you’re going to walk. Just the value of having that person in your corner, whether it’s a parent or a friend, is really critical. So let’s walk through the story: Richard Williams actually taught himself tennis by watching instructional videos.

Alex: The original YouTube.

Caitlin: He began coaching both Serena and Venus on the courts in Compton before Venus had turned five. Serena’s like two and a half at that point. What’s really radical about this, and we talked about this with Althea Gibson, is that tennis, especially at this time in the 80s, still is not really a space for poor Black people.

Alex: I was gonna say, you heard her mention the public courts in Compton.

Caitlin: Yes, tennis is very much a country-club type of sport. The Williams family was very much considered outsiders, but Richard Williams didn’t care. He wrote a 78-page plan for Venus’s tennis career before she’d even held a racket.

Alex: I don’t think I could write a 78-page anything for something like this.

Caitlin: It worked, because look at the legacy the Williams sisters have left. Venus turned pro at 14 in 1994, immediately drawing attention mostly for the power in her game. Both Williams sisters were capable of hitting harder serves than anyone had seen on the women’s side, and in some cases the men’s side, at the time. The tennis establishment saw them as disruptors, like they didn’t come up through the right channels.

Alex: Didn’t pay their dues, there’s certain ways things are done.

Caitlin: So how does one respond to that? You win.

Alex: Yeah, go win it.

Caitlin: So Venus started winning. She became a U.S. Open finalist at 17 in 1997, announcing her arrival at the highest level of the sport. She went on to win seven Grand Slam singles titles, five Wimbledon titles and two U.S. Open titles, and was the first Black woman since Althea Gibson in 1958 to be ranked world number one, in 2002. She was 22 at the time. That power was something you couldn’t ignore, a serve that regularly exceeded 120 miles per hour, which at that point you basically can’t return. That put her into this box of “other,” not that she needed help getting there based on societal norms, but she generated results, and societally we have a hard time when somebody comes into a space and succeeds in an unconventional way.

She also won Olympic gold medals: a singles gold at the 2000 Sydney Games and four doubles golds with Serena, very dominant in doubles in the early 2000s. Venus was diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease, in 2011, and has continued to compete. She turned 46 last week and is still competing at the elite level, making the top rounds of qualifiers at these tournaments, refusing to let setbacks get her down.

Alex: I think the interesting thing I saw here isn’t some amazing sports take, but the age of 17 when she was a U.S. Open finalist. I was 10 years old in 1997, and Serena and Venus have just been present throughout our entire lives, because they started at 14, 15, 16, 17, and have been so dominant for the past 30 years, it’s insane.

Caitlin: Yeah, for our generation in particular, you think of tennis, you think of Serena and Venus Williams, and probably Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, maybe Novak Djokovic. There’s no one else you think of first. That’s a really good example of legacy, becoming the brand associated with a sport. So let’s talk about this equal pay fight in a bit more detail. Wimbledon had a pay disparity between men and women until 2007. In 2006, Venus wrote that op-ed in the Times of London and came with receipts, showing that women filled the same seats, sold the same tickets, generated the same passion, and deserved the same pay. It wasn’t making wild claims, it was backed by data. That campaign went on for about a year before Wimbledon made the change to equal pay.

We just talked about how players protested the French Open this year, not because of equal pay, but because of the proportion going to players relative to the association, and Wimbledon then turns around and says they’re gonna give players more proportion. You have to wonder, does that happen if Venus Williams hadn’t done what she did? Like Billie Jean King, who fought for equal pay at the U.S. Open, she wasn’t just doing this for herself, she was looking around at her fellow competitors and saying we all deserve this. You could say Venus sort of rounded out the grand slam of equal pay that Billie Jean King started back in 1973.

Alex: Yeah, if you go back to Lisa Leslie and how she didn’t have to stay for the WNBA, Venus was already good. She didn’t have to pick any fights with anyone.

Caitlin: Right, and she did. She would have had endorsement deals and things like that, she didn’t need the money. She also, like Lisa Leslie, decided to go make a bunch of businesses.

Alex: I think going back to the last episode we did of this, and this episode, everyone’s just standing on business.

Caitlin: That’s right. Let’s wrap up talking about the sisters, which is again timely, since they’ll be playing together again at Wimbledon as you’re hearing this. Venus and Serena have competed against each other 31 times professionally. Serena holds the head-to-head lead, but that’s pretty crazy given how close they are. Venus has said it’s one of the trickier things to navigate: you love your sister dearly and want her to be successful, but you’re also a fierce competitor. It’s kind of a win-win, if I win, great, but if my sister wins, I can’t really be upset about that either. When they’re playing, though, there’s no rolling over.

Alex: I’d rather probably lose to a sibling than lose to some random person.

Caitlin: So they don’t always compete against each other, they compete with each other too. In their doubles careers together, I think they’d won six doubles titles at Wimbledon alone over a 12- or 14-year span when they were competing there. You see this elevation they create for one another, both in play, and it was always a big deal when Serena and Venus made a final together, probably more viewership from a “family drama” angle. They just always seem to have each other’s backs going through the different challenges of racism, sexism, all the things that come with being a Black female athlete in the world. One thing I really applaud Venus for is she was first to the table, the first of the two of them to be ranked world number one, and in being first, it opened the door for Serena to then dominate.

Alex: And?

Caitlin: She did. Venus has always been so gracious. That could have gone very differently if she’d been petty or jealous, but she used it as fire and fuel while also acknowledging, you’re also awesome, and this is all just good for all of us.

Alex: I kind of think it’s something to be an elite competitor, a number-one-in-the-world type, but I think it’s also extremely elite to be able to be that gracious.

Caitlin: Agreed.

Alex: It’s just this crazy form of leadership, and I can’t even put it into words, it’s really cool.

Caitlin: Yeah, there’s a balance, the Williams sisters strike this nice balance between fierce competitor and humble achiever, which makes sense given where they came from. They didn’t have privilege on their side growing up. They had a dad really dedicated to them becoming successful, who drilled into them the value of hard work, and that you’re always going to have obstacles, coming from where they came from, looking the way that they look. But hone your craft, compete at the highest level, win, and people are going to pay you notice.

So rounding out Venus: she owns an interior design business called V Starr, very successful, built basically as a second entire career outside of tennis. She also founded EleVen by Venus, an activewear brand, expanding her portfolio further. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2021, but she’s still out there, still kicking it. Every tennis tournament, it’ll be like, oh, Venus Williams is out in the first round, maybe she loses, maybe she wins, but she just loves to play.

Alex: Loves to play.

Megan Rapinoe, Simone Biles, and Caitlin Clark: three recent doors

Caitlin: All right, this last section is a bit of a mashup of three athletes, so we’ll go a little quicker. The way I want to focus this is around specific moments where each of these three women has impacted the women’s sports landscape as we see it today. We’re going to talk about Megan Rapinoe, Simone Biles, and Caitlin Clark.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: There are plenty of other athletes we could be talking about, but these are some of the landmark moments in really recent history, going back to the 2020 time period. What’s interesting is the through line for all three: they didn’t just perform their sport, they used their platform to elevate their sport, and potentially other sports around them. Megan Rapinoe proved women athletes could be the story, that they didn’t need to just shut up and dribble. Simone Biles proved you could control the story as an athlete, which at the time drew a lot of swirl and controversy, but reflecting back on it, that took a lot of guts. And Caitlin Clark helped prove the market for women’s basketball was always there, it was just a matter of how you tap it.

So on Megan Rapinoe’s story, we’re going to focus on the equal pay fight, a theme we’ve seen before with Billie Jean King and Venus Williams, and also the concept of the blueprint, which brings us back to Donna Lopiano and the blueprint she drafted for collegiate athletic departments growing their women’s sports programs.

Taking us back in history: the U.S. Women’s National Team filed a lawsuit on March 8, 2019, just three months before that year’s World Cup, so all eyes were already coming onto women’s soccer. The U.S. Women’s National Team gets outsized attention because they’re the best in the world, and they were looking at gross historical disparities in pay. In the 2018 Men’s World Cup, there was a $400 million prize pool. Men’s soccer is arguably one of the largest sports in the world, so it makes sense it has a much larger pool than the women’s side, but the women’s pool in the 2019 World Cup, just one year later, was $30 million, less than 10% of the men’s pool. The U.S. women’s team won the World Cup in 2019. France won the men’s World Cup in 2018. The French men’s team got $38 million, about 9.5% of that total pool. The U.S. women’s team got $4 million, about 13% of their total pool, which is a smaller pool to begin with, so the French men’s team won ten times what the women won. In the 2015 World Cup, the U.S. women also won and got $2 million that year; the U.S. men’s team in 2014 earned $9 million just for losing in the round of 16, because they got out of group stage.

Alex: Where do I get to lose and make this kind of money?

Caitlin: That kind of puts a point on what I was just saying, even teams that don’t perform at a great level were getting an outsized proportion relative to how the women were splitting things up. Now, the fight wasn’t just legal, held in courtrooms. It was very public. There were “equal pay” chants at the 2019 World Cup, Megan Rapinoe had some very famous press conferences and gestures, and she was really central to this fight, though Alex Morgan and about 27 players, current and past, were part of this litigation.

They reached a settlement with U.S. Soccer in February 2022: $24 million total, $22 million in back pay for their championships of the past, and $2 million toward a post-career fund. They had sought $66.7 million, so they got about a third of what they asked for, but we still have to categorize this as a win. In settling, there’s an acknowledgment of owing something. What’s critical here too, going back to the Donna Lopiano segment, is that the U.S. Women’s National Team created a blueprint that other women’s football federations around the world are now referencing, including, I believe, an Asian federation’s own equal pay fight, getting support from some U.S. Women’s National Team players.

Megan Rapinoe used her platform, similar to how Billie Jean King used the Battle of the Sexes, to put this on the public stage.

Alex: Thinking back to what we talked about with the flashiness of things, some of it on the field after scoring goals, some of it just being loud and drawing eyes that maybe aren’t normally watching this type of thing, bringing more people to your cause.

Caitlin: Yes, and we just said with Lisa Leslie that visibility creates viability. If I can draw more eyeballs to this, I’m going to have haters, and Megan Rapinoe knew that well. She got some haters. She’s someone who knelt with Colin Kaepernick when he was kneeling for racial injustice, has long fought for LGBTQ rights, and believes transgender women belong in sports. She’s no stranger to standing up for what she believes in and understanding that with that comes a lot of vitriol in her direction, but she’s not afraid of that, and it doesn’t make her back down. Whether or not we agree with some of those views, we can respect the conviction and the willingness to use her platform to advocate for others. That’s a pivotal moment now starting to shape more parity across international soccer, which is really exciting to see.

All right, moving on from Megan Rapinoe, let’s talk about the GOAT of U.S. women’s gymnastics, Simone Biles. We’re going to anchor in the Tokyo 2021 Olympics, which were supposed to be 2020.

Alex: COVID happened.

Caitlin: Simone Biles famously withdraws from the team final and the individual events, citing the twisties. For those who may not be familiar, gymnasts need a very good spatial sense when they’re flying through the air, so they know where they need to land, and the twisties are essentially when you can’t find that orientation while doing your skill. She was like, nope, not doing it, this puts me in danger, and I refuse, even on this stage, to go out and do this. People were pretty split about it: a lot of people said good for you, this is something we should be doing more of, because there have probably been a number of examples in history where people haven’t been willing to step back and have gotten hurt or worse. Then there was a whole host of people saying she was letting her country down.

Alex: Well, I think of it in non-athlete terms: it’s like you could be the highest-paid executive and totally forget about your family. In that context, the real courage is to say, I don’t need this, this is the more important thing here. For the people saying she’s weak, no, what she did was actually the harder thing to do, with all the expectations and everything.

Caitlin: Right, and let’s talk about those expectations. Going into Tokyo, she had 30 world medals, 23 of them gold, the most decorated gymnast in history, man or woman. She was basically the face of Team USA going into those Olympics. But this is also somebody who, through earning all of those accolades, knows her body, because she spent hours and hours honing this craft, and she said, my choice is me over all of these other things, and that’s what setting a boundary looks like. That’s uncomfortable for some people, and it’s a really hard thing to do, especially in a spotlight like she was in.

The way I like to frame it up: she asserted that an athlete’s body and mind are not someone else’s property. We saw this with Althea Gibson too, when she was on this tear as a tennis star winning the U.S. Open in the late 50s, and the U.S. government decided to trot her around on a world tour as a symbol, and she was like, wait a second, I’m not a puppet for you. There’s this thread running through it, in this case saying no for the right reasons.

Alex: I think the big thing here too is, in the moment, it can seem like you’re letting down your country, your coaches, your teammates, all this stuff. But when you take a step back and look at it, think about all of the little girls looking up to her, watching her, seeing that even the best sometimes have bad days, and then she set the boundary and enforced it. It’s a huge example for the next generation, not just of athletes, but girls and everyone.

Caitlin: Totally. Then you fast forward to Paris in 2024, where it was a show. She won three gold medals, team, all-around, vault, and got silver on floor, famously behind Rebeca Andrade, which was a big moment of women supporting women, and a fantastic competition and display of sportsmanship across multiple nations. Her current career totals, and I say current because who knows what’s next, are 11 Olympic medals and the 30 world medals we talked about, arguably indisputably the most decorated. She wanted to be able to compete in Paris, so she said no to Tokyo, though it’s not like she planned it that way, she wasn’t trying for that, she wanted to be competing. But she shows us what setting a boundary looks like.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: I grew up seeing Kerri Strug in 1996, who had a pretty bad injury but decided to compete anyway, vaulting on that ankle. That was the example I saw: fight through the pain. Obviously different injuries, different people, they can set their own boundaries, but I think having a Simone Biles for our girls to see and understand is going to be so beneficial for how we think about mental health, how we perform at a high level, and what’s really important.

Alex: Yeah, things like that.

Caitlin: So that’s a little bit about Simone Biles, and we’re gonna wrap up talking about Caitlin Clark.

Alex: Yep.

Caitlin: What we’re focused on here is the impact she’s had on viewership and attendance in women’s basketball, as she surged onto the scene in her college years at Iowa, and what that’s meant for women’s basketball as a whole. I want to make sure we acknowledge, and I said this in the Lisa Leslie segment too, that we’re not sitting here saying Caitlin Clark is solely responsible for the growth of women’s basketball as we see it today. She’s been an extreme catalyst for what was already there, and she did bring in a new fan base that prior to her wasn’t really interested in basketball. That’s undeniable. We’ll talk a little about the data that supports that, and then I have a few comments on what the W might want to be watching out for as she gets further along in her professional career.

Clark enters the WNBA in 2024, one of the most anticipated athletes to join the pro ranks in a long time. If you look at the data for the Indiana Fever: in 2023, the total season attendance for the Fever was 81,000 fans. In Clark’s first year, they surpassed that mark in the first five home games. Average home attendance jumped from just under 5,000 fans per game to over 17,000.

Alex: Selling out, basically.

Caitlin: Right, and there was also this element of teams having to move games to larger arenas when she came to town, like the Washington Mystics having to move a game to where the Wizards normally play, a much bigger venue. It is undeniable that she put more butts in seats, whether she was playing or not.

Then you think about overall attendance for the league. In 2024, the W’s overall attendance was about 2.3 million, the highest in 22 years, up almost 50% year over year. It’s impressive, and what I find really interesting is there was already an undercurrent of upswing in attendance coming out of the COVID bubble.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: She acts as this extreme catalyst on top of that. The flash.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: So moving into the TV statistics: 54 million-plus unique viewers across all networks in 2024. That number’s inevitably going to change this year because of the huge new broadcast deal, so there’s just more accessibility. At the end of the day, what Clark demonstrates is when you make it accessible, put it on air, keep tickets from being crazy expensive, people will show up, and they want to watch and cheer these ladies on.

Alex: Yeah, totally.

Caitlin: The WNBA All-Star game, in her first year, drew 3.4 million viewers. The previous record was about 1.4 million, set in 2003. It’s been a while. Merchandise sales were up 601% from 2023, and I think the majority of that was Caitlin Clark Indiana Fever jerseys. One thing I saw that was really funny: in 2024 or 2025, the fourth top-selling jersey, can you guess who it was?

Alex: Kate Martin.

Caitlin: Kate Martin, who played with Clark at Iowa, but also just seems like a fantastic person. There’s that halo effect created there. Now, like I said before, what we’re talking about here isn’t a demand problem. I think it gets categorized that way, because A, people love to hate on women’s sports.

Alex: Yep.

Caitlin: And B, you can’t prove there wasn’t a demand for this visibility when you never gave it the visibility in the first place. So let’s talk a little about where this is headed. Last year was a bit of a weird year: Caitlin played her first season in 2024, had a lot of success, played about half of last season with what we’re told was a really bad groin injury, and we still saw continued success and continued eyeballs on the W. As we started this year’s season, obviously the historic CBA was really important, but we’ve talked a lot about how important she is for this.

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: And how is that going to go? My take so far is there’s been a very concerning narrative already this season around Clark, the Fever, whatever it might be. There’s a lot of opinions on how she is or isn’t treated, we already have the overarching layer of officiating issues, and things like that. What’s interesting, and this is more something we can just ponder ourselves, is how does the league calibrate to this?

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: I was just going to say, she again inevitably brought in a lot of fans who weren’t previously following the W, and a lot of those fans seem to be very outraged whenever anything goes against Clark. At the same time, they’re spending money, watching the broadcast, buying the merchandise. As a business owner, or the showrunner if you will, how do you think about the drama being created there, but also the business benefit to some of that? I hate that it takes away from the product on the court, but is it true that any attention is good attention?

Alex: That’s where I was going too, there’s a lot of maybe toxic takes both ways on Caitlin Clark, on social media and things like that. I worry that the leadership in the WNBA might be looking at this as, we don’t care how toxic it is one way or the other, as long as it’s attention.

Caitlin: And as long as it’s the attention…

Alex: Attention is good, and attention on this player who brought in a new customer segment is also good. I hope the product doesn’t struggle, but she is absolutely helping the overall league as a whole. We’ll see where it goes.

Caitlin: Yeah, the last thing I’ll say is it’ll be interesting to see whether people tend to flock toward success. While Clark has had a lot of individual success, seemingly breaking some kind of record every night, is it translating into team success? Is some of the swirl and churn and outside stuff creating a challenge that gets in the way of winning games, because at the end of the day the goal is to win games?

Alex: Yeah.

Caitlin: So it’s something we’re watching for. We want to continue to see the league be successful, and we want the narrative to be about the impressive play of all of these women, how competitive and skilled they are, what good leaders they are, how they represent their communities and their teams. I don’t love where we head when we get close to some of the nastier narratives that cut in both directions, but that’s also what happens when you’re creating this kind of attention.

Alex: I think it’s an interesting athlete to end on, just because she’s kind of in the most middle-of-career point. Everyone else we’ve talked about has been at the historical point, or towards the end, and this is still very much the beginning, so we get to watch where this one goes over the next few years.

Closing thoughts

Caitlin: So to close us out, we talked about this theme of the door, and I think we’ve seen a lot of other themes come out of this too. At the end of the day, there’s all of these challenges that these different women face, and really none of them accept where they’re at. They’re all refusing to accept what’s deemed conventional, or standard, or accessible at the time. Megan Rapinoe was handed a platform and basically told to shut up and play, and she used that to demand justice, in a lot of different ways. Caitlin Clark was handed a sport with a glass ceiling and basically said, watch, I’m going to change that narrative really quickly. And Biles was handed a system that asked her to perform through anything, I mean I just mentioned Kerri Strug, and she said no, and then came back on her own terms. We’ve actually seen that exemplified: if you think of the Winter Olympics recently, Alysa Liu took a break for her mental health, came back, and won a gold medal. We’re seeing that translate into success when players make the choice to set boundaries for themselves.

So through these two parts, every woman in this series, from Althea Gibson in the 1950s to Simone Biles in Paris in 2024, has faced a version of the same negotiation: here are your terms, here’s what we will allow, here’s the ceiling we’ve built for you, here’s the door that’s locked. Every single one of these women renegotiated those terms. Every single one of them either slammed the door open, widened the doorway…

Alex: Didn’t even know the door was there.

Caitlin: Didn’t even know the door was there, whatever it was. When we think about a refusal to accept the terms as given, that’s when these doors get opened. So we think about what’s next: watch for where somebody is given terms and makes a choice, and what door does that open for the next generation of women’s athletes.

Alex: Women’s athletes. There you go.

Caitlin: I do like what you did there.

Alex: All right, I think that does it for today.

Caitlin: Yeah, we had a lot of fun with this little series. If you want to catch part one, that’s episode 13, so this feels very timely being episode 26.

Alex: Look at that, maybe every 13th episode will do something like this.

Caitlin: Almost like we planned it.

Alex: We did not.

Caitlin: RTG underscore pod on Instagram and Threads, YouTube, Raising the Game on Substack, raisingthegamepodcast@gmail.com, and rtgpod.com.

Alex: Yeah, share, like, subscribe, comment, all the things. We really appreciate y’all listening.

Caitlin: Bye.

Alex: Bye.