All photos by VIA
Welcome: I am a women’s sports evangelist and have been since the current era of women’s sports began in the late 1990s. My spark being a combination of the short-lived American Basketball League playing on the college campus I worked at to watching the stunning conclusion of the 1999 Women’s World Cup.
As a tomboy with a women’s studies degree I also understood the tight connection between what feminists had fought for with Title IX and what we were watching evolve in professional leagues starting and folding.
While I raised my daughter on women’s sports by signing her up for gymnastics as a toddler and soccer at age 3, taking her to watch Chicago’s women’s soccer, softball, basketball, and roller derby teams, I was missing one link to take what I was doing as a mom to what I was doing as a feminist.
As the 2010 Winter Olympics started, I thought, here we go again, another Olympics where the women athletes would be lauded for their strength and grit, then discarded after the flame was extinguished.
Then the late Frank DeFord, a strong supporter of women’s sports, remarked on NPR
Ladies, to help your athletic sisters, you have got to descend on Las Vegas and demand the right to lose good money betting on games, just as men have forever. … There are a lot of reasons why girls from all over the country decide to go play their college basketball in a chilly little backwater called Storrs, Conn.—but a prime one is simply that UConn women’s basketball is popular. The home games bang out. The glass grandstand has been smashed there. The players are celebrities. They are treated, well, like men. But UConn remains the prime exception. Even as more and more women participate in sports, not enough of us, either sex, seem to want to watch—to care—when women play in teams.
From 2010 to 2020 I led a challenge to feminists to attend one women’s sporting event a year because women’s sports are political. Feminists fought to expand not just access, but level the playing field in terms of actual fields and locker rooms for women and girls. I closed my project when pro athletes and major media companies started to pay attention to women’s sports. I thought my work was done.
But it is not.
As women’s sports have skyrocketed since 2020 I am even more passionate about the enterprise. Taking friends to see games, talking it up online does not feel enough. Thus this newsletter.
Support Women’s Sports Chicago seeks to answer the frequent questions:
Where do I go to attend women’s sports? Can I go solo?
Where do I go to watch women’s sports? What if a women’s sports bar is too far from me?
How do I get in the game itself? Am I too old to learn a sport?
I will offer commentary about the state of women’s sports, especially in Chicago, the rise of women’s sports bars, and offer suggestions on how after being inspired by Angel Reese, how you can get sporty yourself.
This is not just a passion project, but one I need to be sustainable. I am asking you to support this work by joining as a member at $9 a month (or more!). At a certain point I will start to offer membership benefits, but for now, everyone who supports me at $9 a month will receive a soon-to-be-designed sticker. Everyone who joins as a dues-paying member will receive an e-thank you card.
Women’s sports is a growing space in our world. And I believe that fans deserve the best and that includes fan-run media.
Thank you,
— Veronica I. Arreola