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In women's sports, it always seems that for every two steps forward, there's one step backward. Or, at best, one step sideways.
As the Florida football team finished off Ohio State for the national championship Monday night, announcers around the country began noting that Florida had become the first school to hold the national championship in "basketball and football at the same time."
That's not entirely wrong, but it's also not entirely right. There's an adjective missing from that phrase: the word "men's." It was the men's basketball team that won the national championship for the Gators last year.
Clearly, some in the sports media still believe the men's game is the only game, that it's so important it is basketball, that there's "real" basketball and then the one that requires the adjective, the one played by women, of course.
It's a subtle, sometimes almost imperceptible slight, but it should come as no surprise that it was noticed by, among others, the coach of the nation's other 2006 Division I championship basketball team.
"I kept hearing that on TV," University of Maryland women's coach Brenda Frese said on the phone Wednesday. "They're talking about the national champion without saying which one. You feel like women's sports have grown, and they certainly have, but then these things still happen. It's kind of amazing that's the direction we're still going."
There's an irony in this, in the fact that a fresh new face in women's sports, a recruiting dynamo like the 36-year-old Frese, in the midst of the most popular and visible sport women play, would even have to be dragged into discussions such as the one about the missing adjective.
She has led the Terrapins, the nation's top-ranked team, to an 18-0 record after Wednesday's 111-53 victory at Miami (Fla.), with a rematch with Duke, the team the Terrapins defeated in overtime in the riveting national final, looming Saturday afternoon. That game, at Duke, is sold out. It's the seventh sellout ever of Cameron Indoor Stadium for a Blue Devils women's game. The eighth is already in the books as well, for Duke's game against North Carolina next month.
Maryland, meanwhile, can return the favor, and nearly double it. Cameron holds 9,314. Maryland's Comcast Center held an ACC women's record 17,243 for the Duke game two years ago. This season's Feb. 18 rematch between the two schools already is sold out, as is Maryland's home game with the Tar Heels later this month.
People flock to see these teams because they all are unbeaten and are currently ranked 1, 2 and 3 in the nation, Maryland, UNC and Duke, in that order. Tennessee and UConn are up there too, but not like this, at least not at the moment. What the ACC has always meant to men's basketball, it's gradually meaning to the women's game too.
"There's an intense rivalry building," said Frese, who is in her fifth season at Maryland. "My first three years here, they were beating us to a pulp. There was no rivalry. But they were our measuring stick, our gauge, and now we've gotten to the place where we've assembled enough pieces to be competitive with them."
The pieces are young and hungry; Frese started two freshmen, two sophomores and one junior in the 2006 national championship game, Maryland's 78-75 victory against Duke. Then she hauled in a fourth consecutive top-10 recruiting class. It's enough to make the Summitts and Auriemmas of the world shudder, just a bit. And she's already thinking about the girls playing hoops in junior high.
"A national championship game like the one we played etches in the minds of kids in the eighth, ninth, 10th grade," she said. "That's who you reach. They're the ones who are watching and remembering."
Maryland athletics director Debbie Yow has been ecstatic about the promise of Frese since the day she hired her in April 2002. The cause and effect is undeniable. Yow watched Maryland's season-ticket sales skyrocket for Frese's team this season after winning the national title -- from 2,000 last year to 7,000 this season.
Slowly but surely, the rest of the sports world might be coming around, too. While Duke and Maryland play Saturday in sold-out Cameron, the game will be televised nationally on Fox Sports Net. And ESPN will have the score crawling along the bottom of the TV screen. It will be listed, predictably enough, under the label "NCAAW."
That's because "NCAAB" remains reserved for the men. We're presuming the B is for basketball, not boys.
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