Why I love Women's Basketball

To say growing up in Iowa can be quite boring would be an understatement. Most of the country thinks our entire state is covered in corn fields and livestock. Iowa, we're just farmers or "idiots out walking around." The truth is growing up in Iowa wasn't much different than many suburban areas around the country. Especially considering I was born in 1983, and technology wasn't exactly what it is today.

I grew up in Bettendorf, Iowa, or as I say to my reluctant California friends, "East Coast Iowa." Bettendorf, to those who aren't familiar, is part of the Quad Cities; Moline and Rock Island in Illinois, and Bettendorf and Davenport in Iowa. Bettendorf is home of the black and gold Bulldogs, where my mother graduated, and both of my older sisters, not to mention a handful of uncles and cousins. Needless to say, I was born in black and gold. A child of the 1980's, I was constantly outside playing with my older sisters, Kerri and Amanda. Some of my earliest memories are from our home just a few hundred yards downriver from Lock and Dam 14. Our backyard ended IN the Mississippi River. That's where I learned how to swim. That's where I learned I was afraid of snakes. And that is where I learned I did not like to fish. My sisters and I would grab apples from our apple trees out front and tie them to sticks with string to use for fishing. At around 4-years old I simply couldn't understand why the fish weren't biting into these fist-sized pieces of fruit. Surely a catfish or a walleye would LOVE fresh fruit. I was wrong. Our family home sat on top of a hill between the train tracks and the river. During the summers my parents would toss out the slip n' slide on the hill. During the winter it was sleds, tubes, and snowboards. Every few years, the Mississippi would flood and we'd have our own lake in our backyard to slip n' slide right into.

Shortly before kindergarten, my family moved away from the river house, to the home I remember most near Mark Twain Elementary School. My sisters and I could walk to school, as it was only a few blocks. We had dozens of kids and friends in our neighborhood. My dad worked for Alcoa Aluminum as a supervisor where he'd been since high school. My mom, from my earliest memories, was just at home, all day, dealing with us. In the late 80's I remember my dad coming home with an axe and firefighter gear. He had joined the Bettendorf Fire Department as a volunteer. Not even a year later, there were two sets of firefighter gear at the front door. My mom, all of 5'4 and 115 lbs, had decided to attend firefighter school, becoming one of the first female firefighters in the State of Iowa. This glass ceiling was broken. At around 8 years of age, I remember sitting at home on Monday nights with my older sisters watching Disney movies on VHS waiting for both of my parents to return from their weekly firefighter training sessions and meetings. My parents had the whole nine yards. Magnetic blue lights for their vehicles, beepers, scanners, and walkie-talkies. It was cool!

One summer evening, my dad packed us up to go to a Quad City Angels game (a minor league baseball team at the time connected to the Angels in California.) My two sisters and my dad and I jumped into the Mercury station wagon and headed to John O'Donnell Stadium in Downtown Davenport. I wasn't a huge baseball fan as a kid. I played every summer, as both of my sisters were gifted softball players, and of course, my mom was a former collegiate catcher. My dad played, too, on a coed-slow pitch team and had for years. I don't know what my family was most excited about that evening, but I was stoked to see my mom. You see, that night, my mom was crashing through ANOTHER glass ceiling: as one of the first women behind home plate to umpire a professional baseball game. That was 1991. Throughout elementary school, I have VIVID memories of my mom appearing at school. One day during a game of soccer at recess, a classmate was accidentally pushed into a chain link fence, which unfortunately punctured right through his thumb, and didn't let go. The teacher called 911, and low and behold, my mom - pager hooked to belt - arrived first on the scene, on FOOT, with medical gear in tow. Matt's thumb was saved. Numerous other anecdotal events through grade school ended with my mom on site. It was good to have a trained first responder up the road wearing Pink Converse.

In the fall of 1993, at the ripe at of 10, I remember an 11 AM kickoff time for the Iowa Football team. My dad was at work, my sisters were busy, and I was in the basement, solo, cheering on my favorite team. With a turkey sandwich with Boejetes mustard and a plate of BBQ ruffles, it was time to watch the black and gold dominate the field. This young Freshman named Sedrick Shaw, who to me was just pure speed, cut for the end zone leaving a defender in his dust. I jumped off the couch and screamed with joy as Shaw marched into the endzone. Sedrick seemed to have taken my breath away. I was so excited. I wasn't breathing. I couldn't breathe. "Wait a minute," I thought to myself. I was choking on a BBQ Ruffle. In my basement. Alone. I couldn't cough. I couldn't speak. I could only kick my legs. Just as I began to lose consciousness, my mom came barreling down the stairs from, I don't have a clue where she came from, but she gave me the Heimlich maneuver while calling 9-1-1. My mom saved me. All she could say was, "I'm glad Shaw scored. When you screamed, I started running," she said. I screamed because we scored! Thankfully my mom wasn't a very big person, because my frail 10-year-old self wasn't ready for the possible rib-breaking Heimlich.

Fast forward a few years to high school. By the time I was a sophomore, my sisters were already out of the house and off to college, respectively. Amanda, to the University of Northern Iowa, to study Art and Theatre, and Kerri to the University of Iowa for Theatrical Design. I was the last of my family to attend Bettendorf High School. I felt a bit like a legacy, as both my sisters were pretty active with music, theatre, and sports. But it was my sophomore year that I realized my mom was the coolest kid in school, not me.

Theatrical arts were something my siblings and I had been involved in since I could remember. My sisters loved the design aspect of building sets, setting lights, and running the works behind the scenes. My mom had always been a proficient seamstress, working for nearby venues for big and small acts. I remember her stories about sewing David Copperfield's cape at the Mark of the Quad Cities in between performances. She has tales of having lunch next to Kenny Chesney or helping Janet Jackson with a wardrobe change. While I spent my theatrical love on stage, my mom was always backstage creating the coolest costumes ever to grace the stage of Bettendorf High. After school, you'd find my mom in the green room sewing with students, showing them the tricks of the trade, with the patience of a saint and the confidence of a superstar. My mom was a pro. My mom was popular. My mom has more friends than me. It was pretty cool.

The summer between my Junior and Senior years I recall coming home from my lifeguarding shift to find both my parents on the deck with the technical and theatrical directors from my school. They were enjoying a few Blue Moons, of course with an orange garnish. This wasn't new. This was my high school experience. My teachers were friends with my parents. And that meant some teachers came over. The foursome would talk about what shows would work for the upcoming years; discussing what students could play specific parts in shows, and how to ultimately make the next year's shows better than the last. My mom was always involved in everything I did. I guess I took it for granted. I thought that was just what moms did. But nope. That was just my mom. During my senior year, I continued to focus on music and theater but never missed a high school basketball or football game. I was in pep band and marching band, so I was going to be there anyway performing throughout the game. But come the end of the halftime performances, I would sprint to change to make it back to the stands before the start of the second half. It was there in the front of the student section where I would land myself, ready and willing to scream my butt off for the black and gold in Bettendorf.

After high school, I attended Central College in Pella. It was a school that I knew nothing much about. There was a red corduroy pillow in the basement that said Central College on it, but I never really asked any questions. It wasn't until my senior year that my mom talked to me about her college experiences. She had attended Central College right out of high school where she played basketball and softball. She later transferred to St. Ambrose University in Davenport to be closer to her family. Somehow, without much planning, I was following my mom's footsteps to Pella.

I enrolled at Central in 2001, majoring in music and communication. I spent my first year on campus, a few hours away from family, with frequent trips to Iowa City to see my sister and my friends at the U of I. In the fall of 2002, a new student enrolled at Central College. It was my mom. You see, she never finished college in the 70's and her short time back on campus seeing me empowered her to get back to it. So for the next two years, my mom attended college with me. She lived in an apartment owned by the Central. I remember my mom coming to my fraternity house, sneaking a 6-pack of Captain Morgan Gold in her bag, to hang out multiple times. "Mom, don't get caught with that booze, or my frat will get written up," I remember telling her. Central College was just shy of 2,000 students, and my mom knew them all. She isn't as outgoing as me, but she is observant, interested, and invested in anything she sees, says, or does. In the Spring of 2004, I watched my mom walk across the graduation stage to shake hands with the President of the University, as hundreds of students cheered her on. She had done it. Degree now in hand, my mom had finished what she started. I have some very funny memories of how my mom celebrated the night before at one of the 4 bars in town, but I will save her the embarrassment, and keep that for just family.

Over the last 20 years, I've made the 177-mile trip from my home in the Des Moines Metro to my parent's home in Bettendorf a few hundred times. But the last 4 years have been the most exciting. You see, this young star on November 25th, 2020 took the main stage at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, and us loyal Hawk fans had no idea what was yet to come. That weekend, I remember talking to my mom about this girl from West Des Moines playing for Iowa. I was fortunate enough to have followed Caitlin a bit more while she attended Dowling in West Des Moines. "Mom, you gotta see this girl. She's pulling up without any hesitation and draining them all!"

Over the next 4 years, our conversations always steered back to the women's game at Iowa. It was in these discussions with my mom that I started to reflect on some of the things I had heard her say to me over the past 40-ish years. "It's firefighter, not fireman." "I can throw a ball way harder than him." "It doesn't matter how tall you are if you can shoot." "Girls can't just do anything guys can do. They can do them better." These were common things I heard growing up from my mom. These were things my mom said to me, said to everyone. My mom never shied away from adversity. She'd hop right in and work it all out in her own 'mom' way. My mom raised me right. I was born during a women's basketball game in 1983. I grew up cheering my sisters on. I watched my mom throw baseball players out of games from behind home plate. I saw my mom win countless "Silver Skates" competitions because of COURSE, she was also an accomplished speed skater in her youth. She's rescued people from burning buildings, frozen rivers and lakes, and horrific car accidents. She was more than a woman. More than my mom. She was a full-fledged hero.

Wow. Even writing this now, I'm utterly delighted with pride.

When you grow up treating women as equals, you appreciate women as equals. I was raised by some powerful women, and by a father that didn't stand in the way of the powerful women in our lives. I remember middle school softball matches with my sisters, and being heated as a fan, hooting and hollering their teams to victory. This was girls' park and recreation softball. I remember looking up to Christa Teplicky, a teammate of my sister, who was just a dominant player. I wanted to be like her. So, when Caitlin Clark hit the headlines across the Midwest in 2020-2021, my mom and I were instantly hooked. This young woman just balled - out - constantly. Our weekly phone calls turned into gameday chats or text threads. Somedays it would just be a few emojis and Go Hawks in a text message, but I always knew my mom was somewhere glued to her TV watching CC22 cook.

Last year before the Elite 8 game in the NCAA Women's basketball tournament, I took to TikTok about a nasty trend I was seeing. Haters were coming out of the woodwork, attacking Caitlin Clark, making false claims that she was a transexual, or secretly a man, and other obscene suggestions. I couldn't fathom how this young woman from West Des Moines, Iowa was being so harshly and unfairly judged simply for being good at basketball. The video I posted quickly had 50K views and was filling with two subsects of people: those who dislike Caitlin, and those who love Caitlin. Then, we played LSU in the national championship, and my video went viral. By simply standing up to ignorant people name-calling Caitlin, I found myself in the middle of a fight between Iowa fans and LSU fans. Lo and behold, I was sitting there wondering why these people were mad at me, at my video? Had they not watched it? Did they not listen? It was about standing up for all women, not just the ones you like. (There is a bit of foul language in the video, beware! Sorry, mom.)

I shared the video with my mom. Of course, she addressed my foul language, but after that, she didn't have any notes.

"I feel awful that these young women, these student-athletes are getting so much hate from the peanut galleries," I said to my mom last year. "It all started with Title IX," she replied. "Women have had to fight for every tooth, every nail, every inch, and I guess we still do." Each year, women athletes are subject to an enormous amount of pressure, responsibility, and unfair treatment, just for being women. Whether you are Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, or my mom, Danette Webber, nothing was handed to you. You had to go get it. That's what these powerful women have been doing - and doing well.

In the end, my mom taught me to respect, admire, and love the women in my life. I love Iowa Women's Basketball because I love my mom.