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Meschel VopelESPN.com
A quarter of a century after helping the New York-US women’s basketball team lead to the ongoing Olympic gold rush, Dawn Staley and Tara VanDerve sat on stage and enthusiastically played chess games. To see the world premiere of last week’s ESPN documentary “Dream On” in Manhattan, Starry and Vandervia bet for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics as they see their past come alive on the screen. I remembered how expensive the money was.
Next, the coaches of the last two NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship teams discussed with the legendary team everything that happened during the crucial moments, including the launch of the two Women’s Professional Leagues. A three-part documentary will debut on Wednesday (8 pm, ESPN).
Staley and Van Derveer know everything they didn’t fully understand at the time. Such a perspective is time dependent. Van Derveer was the head coach and Staley was one of the twelve players who changed the history of women’s sports in the mid-1990s. At that time, the NBA and USA Basketball sponsored a women’s version of the Dream Team in preparation for the 1996 Olympic Games.
It wasn’t just Olympic gold, after Americans ran out of two previous major competitions. The 1996 team was a Litmus test on the feasibility of women’s professional basketball in the United States.
“There was a sense of urgency … but when you’re really working hard, you don’t have much time to worry,” says Van Derveer, a longtime Stanford University coach who took a leave of absence from the Cardinal in 1995. rice field. -96 to lead the US team. “I think the players needed to focus on their daily training, not their future training.”
National Collegiate Athletic Association champion South Carolina Gamecock coach Starry also coached Americans to win seven consecutive gold medals at last year’s Japan Olympics. She remembers that the 1996 team understood the mission, but she wasn’t overwhelmed by it.
“We didn’t really have those profound conversations,” Staley said. “Then we didn’t have to feel the weight of the world on our shoulders. We were task-oriented.
“But when you grow up and leave that time, you now have those conversations. Being part of the evolution of sport, seeing, feeling, living, and spending time. Is cool. Really, really grateful and think about how to keep it going. “
History lessons from @dawnstaley 🤩 # Keep dreaming pic.twitter.com/9H4XqKd2fu
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How exceptional the 1996 US team is now is partly supported by how modern its members and coaches are. Staley’s Gamecocks and Van Derveer’s Cardinal are among the top three in ESPN’s latest rankings for the 2022-23 college season. Rebecca Lobo is ESPN’s Chief Analyst for WNBA and Women’s Basketball. Most of the 1996 players are still somehow involved in basketball and athletics.
“I think we rarely realize what’s happening at that moment, especially when we’re young,” signed the first three WNBA teammates Sheryl Swoopes and Lisa Leslie in 1996. Robo, who joined as a person, said. “At the age of 22, I had no foresight about the importance of the team and its importance at that time.
“Now, in my wisdom … the sacred cow, what the Olympic team did, the launch of the WNBA here 26 years later-is there even a WNBA without that team? Certainly that immediate time frame? Not. “
The WNBA began in June 1997 after a months-long global tour of the US team from 1995 to 1996. On this tour, Americans played against college and professional teams to prepare for the Atlanta Olympics. However, the seeds of the 1996 US Women’s Team actually began with the disappointment of the 1992 Olympics.
Americans won the silver medal at the first Olympic Women’s Basketball Tournament in 1976, boycotted the Moscow Games in 1980, and won gold medals in 1984 and 1988.
With the removal of amateur requirements at the 1992 Olympics, the NBA’s legendary team, the Dream Team, dominated the headlines and crushed opponents on their way to the men’s basketball gold medal. Meanwhile, the virtually neglected US women’s team won bronze medals at these Barcelona Games. USA Basketball knew something needed to do when another bronze medal for women followed at the next major tournament, the 1994 FIBA ​​World Championship.
The Women’s Dream Team brought back the gold medal and beat the United States.
The latest “Dream On” @ 30for30Tell their story by streaming at ESPN on Wednesday at 8pm ET @ESPNPlus đź“ş # Keep dreaming pic.twitter.com/NAB0CqPZxG
— ESPN (@espn) June 14, 2022
Curiously, the disappointment of these bronze medals was the greatest event for women’s basketball in the United States. In the 1990s, the NBA realized it was a good time to invest in women’s games and funded the national team, providing a great opportunity to do a kind of test run in the professional league.
“Dream On” records everything from the national team’s tryout camp in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1995 to the frigid winter trip to Russia in 1996 with more than 200 applicants. Includes behind-the-scenes footage. The gymnasium was full until the day of the victory in Atlanta in August 1996, when the Americans returned to the podium for the Olympic medals. Since then, they haven’t left the perch. He has won the Olympic gold medal seven times in a row.
The timing was a coincidence. Robo led UConn to the perfect NCAA title for the 1994-95 season, and Husky got more attention than usual in the women’s college games of the time. Since then, Robo has been the youngest member of the US team to represent many different players and behind-the-scenes stories.
Sheryl Swoopes was considered one of the best female players in the world, scoring 47 points on the Texas Tech Lady Ladies NCAA record in the 1993 National Championship game. But she hated playing abroad-at that time she was the only playing option outside the national team-and trying to stay in the form of basketball playing a pick-up game with the people who appeared. During that time, I noticed that I was working at a bank. Similarly, Lisa Leslie finished her wonderful career at the USC Trojans in 1994, but she didn’t want to play abroad.
This year’s two-time national college player in Virginia Cavalier, Staley, was said to be too short to become an Olympic athlete shortly after her college career ended in 1992. Jennifer Azzi, who led Stanford to her first NCAA title in 1990, couldn’t explain why she left the 1992 Olympic team, but now she’s gay. I’m guessing it’s related to that.
Former Georgia Bulldogs teammates Teresa Edwards and Katrina McClain, who won the gold medal together at the 1988 Olympics, received a redemption decision after the 1992 Olympic bronze medal. However, they felt they were being driven to the meadows, even though they were the most experienced and international players of the Americans. They vowed to show that they were too good to cut.
Carla McGhee was seriously injured in a car accident while playing in Tennessee, so there was no guarantee that he would walk normally after returning to the court or becoming an Olympic athlete. Venus Lacy, the twelfth player added to the team later in the process, was a perfect addition in her size and strength, although she would be injured in a serious car accident after the Olympics.
Ruthie Bolton modeled endless strength for her teammates, even while hiding the nightmare of domestic violence she was afraid to end her life.
The team united during a relentless and rigorous training under Van Derveer. There were no smartphones or the internet where I had traveled miles. Card games, chess-Van Derveer and Staley are jokingly disagreeing over which is better-watching TV and discussing life helped players build ties in court. For long stretches, they only had each other.
“It was a group of very ambitious people who also had the physical toughness and spiritual part to survive a very tough year,” Robo said. “It was a special group.”
The success of the US women’s team’s gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics in basketball, soccer and softball has shown that sponsors are worth participating in the wave of sports development. Also, the winter-based ABL (the first women’s basketball league launched after the Olympics in the United States in the fall of 1996) was collapsed in the third season of December 1998, but longevity is a major milestone for the WNBA. did.
“We’ve moved the chain, but it’s not as successful as if we invested more,” Staley said. “Women’s basketball is almost always successful despite minimal investment. We are looking for more and more opportunities.”
In general, women’s sports have more representation on both television and media platforms that did not exist in the mid-1990s, but women still want greater mainstream visibility. Only a year has passed since the NCAA was exposed to embarrassing inequality between Division I’s men’s basketball tournaments and women’s basketball tournaments. This prompted details of external reviews that primarily apply to all college sports championships.
And while the 12-team WNBA celebrated Silver Anniversary last season, the league hopes to expand for the first time since 2008.
“What we achieved in 1996 will be the perfect moment for me when we really dive into our game and feel the power to give it the space and resources it deserves,” Staley said. “That way, everyone can benefit. I want investors to get back 10 times what they put into our game.”
