Very recently, I asked my very young daughter if she was interested in learning to play basketball. She said "no, basketball is just for boys." I didn't like that answer so I set about proving to her that girls play basketball as well.
She believes me now, and she says she wants to play. So we've been doing a few things like passing the ball and very simple dribbling.
I've never liked women's basketball. I never watch it. Never been interested in it. Of course the thought has occurred to me that if my daughter were to play basketball in high school and college, I would be very much into it as I supported her.
So I am no mentally entering new territory. Women's sports. Something I don't think about at all. It's like "A Bend in the River", I'm scared and I don't know what the hell I'm getting into.
Ok, I'm not scared, but the thought did occur to me, what is up with all these lesbians in women's basketball? I don't pay attention to the WNBA, but I had seen an article that said it had a real lesbian image, and a lot of the WNBA players are lesbians. I was aware that Sheryl Swoopes, a name that had entered my sports consciousness many years prior, had come out as a lesbian. And it just so happened that I recently met someone who was a basketball player and a lesbian.
If my daughter were to really get into basketball, would she be a entering a sport that has an inordinate (huge?) number of lesbians? Is this the equivalent of a parent setting up their 18 year old son with a townhouse in the Castro district of San Francisco?
When I need answers I turn to the Lord. But I also turn to google. Google led me to this article:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncw/news/story?id=6060641 . Apparently, this whole lesbian question and issue is a huge deal for women basketball players. You go through this article and you hear from this lesbian and that lesbian, and then you ask yourself, where are all the gay male college basketball players? (Some of you smartasses are saying "at the coffee house sipping lattes with their ipads"). What is it about basketball and women? Is the same true of volleyball and soccer? Is basketball the "butch" sport? One of the highlights of my very short high school basketball career was playing the girls varsity team when I was a frosh, and blocking out the high school homecoming queen, but I digress.
Am I on the precipice of being a sports dad? You know, the dad of a very good collegiate athlete? One of the guys that the camera pans to in the stands? I thought it was going to be simpler than this. This women's sports thing seems a helluva complicated deal. I'm already getting heartburn and my daughter isn't big enough to shoot on a 6 foot goal.