“Did you hear the rumors?”
It was ten seconds into my visit to Brewnuts, a sort of hybrid bar and donut shop (it works, I promise) on Cleveland’s west side for a WNBA watch party on October 4th, and I’d already been thrown off balance by a question I didn’t understand from a total stranger, a friendly blonde-haired woman.
Mercifully, she clocked my confusion and continued: “…about the Rockers coming back, since they’re building all of that stuff on the river.”
At that moment, I remembered that I was wearing a t-shirt featuring a Cleveland Rockers logo. I pop it on somewhere between occasionally and frequently, and something from the defunct local WNBA team seemed like the obvious choice that evening, given the occasion and my mostly-apathy towards the outcome of a Minnesota-Connecticut playoff game.
I also remembered that the Cleveland Cavaliers and their owner, Dan Gilbert, were building a new training facility on the Cuyahoga River. While I had heard that development connected to a possible revival of the Rockers a couple times, I classified the chatter more as wishful thinking than anything of substance.
“Oh…yeah!” I finally managed to join the conversation as those neurological tumblers clicked into place. “That would be great, hope it happens!”
It was the first time anyone had ever commented on my Rockers shirt, let alone offered something productive to say about it, so I suppose some grace is warranted for my aloofness.
I’m similarly awkward when I try to explain my role in women’s basketball to outsiders, because in most ways, I exist in a liminal space that defies lazy categorization.
No, this isn’t my “real” job, but I commit far more to it than some casual blogger. Ultimately, I’m here because I’m a Cleveland State graduate, but I try my best to be fair to the other ten Horizon League schools. I don’t have a ton of readers or followers, but the ones I do have are disproportionately VIPs. I’m a member of a tight-knit, welcoming community, but the members of that community are mostly coaches, staffers, players and parents whose roles don’t have a ton in common with mine beyond the fact that we all ended up in the same arena at the same time for the same broad reason; there’s nobody present that I truly consider a peer.
There are a thousand ways that last point is reinforced, whether it’s how I’m never quite sure where I’m supposed to enter or sit when I visit a new arena for the first time because nobody working there is used to accommodating external media, the pressure I feel to rehearse the sequencing of my questions before meeting Chris Kielsmeier after games because nobody else is there to ask something and give me the chance to regroup, or the isolating crush of looking around at the mostly-empty media tables at the Wolstein Center during an idle moment.
It’s not that I’m unaware of the historic surge in popularity and coverage of women’s sports generally, and women’s basketball specifically – after all, I volunteered for the Final Four back in April, then was privileged to be able to attend the games – but those things have always seemed like someone else’s reality. ESPN, The Athletic, and nineteen million other people may care about Caitlin Clark versus Dawn Staley, but I’m still drawing the same 300 clicks as always, while being completely unknown outside of my chosen conference.
If a rising tide does indeed lift all boats, it’s sure taking its sweet time getting to this branch of the river.
But last Friday, I was anything but solitary, at once a part of a singular organic body and among a collection of a couple hundred individuals. The tables in Brewnuts were overstuffed, forcing me (and several others) to a makeshift seat on a step leading to a raised section of the floor. There, I started to take stock of the attendees, hoping that my memory of being there wouldn’t be reduced to beer-infused pastries and crowd overview photos in my phone.
Up near the bar, I spotted my blonde inquisitor again. I deduced that she must be the establishment’s co-owner, Shelley Pippin, roughly ten seconds after she grabbed a microphone to welcome everyone to the party.
More than merely hosting an event and selling some almond cream-filled donuts decorated like basketballs, Shelley demonstrated a deep understanding of her guests when she announced, to hearty cheers, that each of the televisions in her business would be tuned to the WNBA game – with the volume turned up.
Those declarations might seem redundant to many, given the nature of the gathering, but to longtime women’s sports fans who have often needed to carve out space in a corner of a bar next to a single muted screen that isn’t showing college football or Major League Baseball, they meant everything. Shelley was fluent in their language, and may have even lived that experience prior to starting a business and gaining control over what goes on the TVs.
If nothing else, she’s certainly plugged into the WNBA rumor mill.
Over in the far corner, about where I was sitting before I forfeited my place to grab another drink, stood Gina Prodan Kelly. On some official level, Gina was present in her capacity with the Cleveland Soccer Group, the organization behind a bid to bring a National Women’s Soccer League expansion team to the city. That bid (which includes Cleveland State booster Michael Murphy as the co-founder and CEO) has generated a ton of momentum lately, including a land acquisition deal that is the hopeful prelude to a downtown stadium, and Gina’s job was to keep the ball moving towards the goal with some free merch and positive conversations.
However, one gets the sense that Gina would have been there regardless of any soccer duties, in her t-shirt that says “Of Course She Has A Shoe Dot Com,” a you-had-to-be-there reference to three-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson’s announcement of her signature Nikes.
Two tables back towards the middle of the throng sat someone in a black Rockers jersey with Janice Lawrence Braxton’s name on the back. Where on Earth does one acquire a Janice Lawrence Braxton Rockers jersey?
A couple summers ago, I set out to acquire every Rockers basketball card ever made, and save for some extreme rarities, I’ve been successful. Braxton, Suzie McConnell-Serio, Merlakia Jones, Chasity Melvin, Eva Nemcova, and the rest, all perfectly preserved on cardboard at the height of their basketball powers, and at the height of Cleveland’s presence in the women’s sports world.
The idea that someone knew at least one of those names, let alone cared enough to hang on to a jersey for 25 years (or at least go looking for it on eBay well after the fact), stunned me. Sure, many Rockers players were quite accomplished (Braxton is in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, in fact), and the team was modestly successful on and off the court. In the present day though, that card collection felt like a secret, an homage to a long-forgotten, yet significant, franchise for an audience of one. As with my t-shirt, I’d never run into anyone with the slightest bit of interest in it. Yet there was someone who would care, a lot, maybe a free throw away from me.
Back in the other direction, at the table closest to me, were Ally Eclarin and Kylie Martin Waller. Ally is the co-founder of State Champs, something that’s a little bit hard to explain. It’s a lifestyle apparel brand at its core, offering products that say things like “Women’s Sports FC,” “They’ve Got Now” (a variation on the WNBA’s inaugural “We Got Next” slogan), and “Bring Women’s Soccer to Ohio.” They’ve been heavily involved in community outreach, part of which involved co-hosting the watch party with Cleveland Soccer Group, as the two organizations have frequently linked up through their common interest.
State Champs has also succeeded at an unlikely concept, a sports-themed coffee shop in Kent, OH that recently ended its run in an incubation space. When I first heard about the establishment, I immediately knew what I needed to do: drive 45 minutes southeast and write something there (well, three things, as it turned out). After all, writers and coffee shops go together like Kielsmeier and the 2-3 zone, and this wasn’t just any coffee shop, it was a sports coffee shop with a particular affinity for women’s sports. It was practically my duty to support such an endeavor, and I’d like to think that sitting near an Aliyah Boston-autographed national champions shirt improved my writing.
Kylie, a former college basketball player at Rutgers and Illinois, started grilling me about Cleveland State’s schedule for the upcoming season when she learned of my work. Yet again, I froze up a bit when confronted with a question I’m never asked – before being saved by Kylie pulling out her phone and checking for herself, an activity that ended with an “I’ve gotta get to a game” declaration.
It’s human nature, and it’s certainly in the journalist’s hard wiring as well, to always seek the broader implications of a happening, to be that person who sees what’s coming down the road before everyone else. But a large gathering in Cleveland to watch a WNBA semifinal game doesn’t signal the imminent return of the Rockers. With any luck, a few attendees will eventually notice the Division I women’s basketball team that plays a few miles east of Brewnuts, though it’s still a nearly-impossible leap from there to my getting more company in postgame press conferences.
Maybe that’s okay, at least for now. Shelley, Gina and Ally are all people who have undertaken bold endeavors and have either succeeded or appear well on the way to doing so. A bar-slash-donut shop? A new stadium and major league sports team in Cleveland? A sports coffeehouse? There are even fewer people doing those things than there are writing about Horizon League women’s basketball. Surely, they’ve each experienced tough moments along the way where they felt like nobody truly understood them. Billie Jean King, Pat Summitt and Angela James had those too, as have most people who have invested themselves in women’s sports, even if the cause was something as routine as social media trolling.
But last Friday, more than an excuse to watch Lynx star Napheesa Collier work, was a chance for the bold to assemble under one roof and be reminded of their unique and special community that isn’t always visible, yet is always present.
