Building on Clark Effect key to growing women’s sports

Women’s college sports leaders are not only celebrating a surge of interest in women’s athletics fueled by superstar Caitlin Clark, they’re eager to leverage that growth to help “turn a moment into a movement.” That was the message delivered at a Visit Quad Cities panel discussion on Wednesday, March 13, in the Rhythm Room at […]

Women’s college sports leaders are not only celebrating a surge of interest in women’s athletics fueled by superstar Caitlin Clark, they’re eager to leverage that growth to help “turn a moment into a movement.” That was the message delivered at a Visit Quad Cities panel discussion on Wednesday, March 13, in the Rhythm Room at Davenport’s Rhythm City Casino Resort. That intimate venue sparked lively interaction between the audience and an AccelerateVQC panel led by Joan Kranovich, Visit Quad Cities vice president of business growth and director of Sports QC, the newly branded regional sports commission.

It featured influential women’s college sports executives in town for the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) Women’s Basketball tournament that tipped off today, March 14, at Moline’s Vibrant Arena at the Mark. The panelists were: Illinois State University Interim Athletic Director Jeri Beggs; Angie Lansing, senior woman administrator at Indiana State University and its interim AD in 2016; and Jill Redmond, the MVC deputy commissioner who has deep experience in athletic programs from Division I to Division III. There is much to celebrate in modern-day sports for women, the leaders reported, and it began even before what has become known as the Caitlin Clark Effect propelled interest in University of Iowa Women’s Basketball and its record-breaking superstar into the stratosphere. But while Ms. Clark was not the primary focus of the event, she was top of mind to panelists and the crowd.  “In terms of the Caitlin Clark effect, I think it’s huge,” Ms. Redmond said. 

Huge moment for women

“I think it's huge for women. I think it’s huge for women’s basketball; for women’s sports. I think it’s an incredible moment that we should all celebrate. But then I also think that we should think about it as a moment that we should also try to leverage,” she added. “So how can we take this moment and make it into a movement?” That includes working to build on hard-won gains for women across multiple sports as well as investing in growing women’s championship events and increasing the number of women leaders in conference offices. According to Ms. Kranovich, last year the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) reported that more than 226,000 women competed in NCAA championships in the 2022 school year, and those numbers are sure to go up in 2023. And the number of sports open to women continues to climb.  “You’re seeing a larger number of women compete in sports like women’s ice hockey, fencing, rowing, water polo, bowling, wrestling,” Ms. Kranovich said, adding “there’s more to come.” That’s what makes this such an interesting time for women’s sports, Ms. Beggs said. “It’s the balance of being appreciative and celebrating the advances that we made, and yet not taking our foot off the gas pedal to ask for more.” For example, she said, 45,000 fewer young women participate in Illinois high school sports than male students. “And I saw a stat this morning and I’ve seen it before, plus or minus 5% of all the television broadcasts for sports, 85% of them are still male sports that you’re seeing on television,” Ms. Beggs added.

Next big thing needed

“Yes, it’s improving. The Caitlin Clarks of the world may prove that we’re doing a much better job, but we’re not there yet,” she said. “It’s like when you win the game but you’ve got to celebrate quickly and move onto the next game. We have to keep looking for the next thing, and the next thing that's going to help us promote women’s sports.” As the country celebrates a half century of Title IX – the law designed to create equity in sports across genders – there has been progress, Ms. Redmond said. “I feel good that we’re in a league that has two female ADs,” she said of Ms. Beggs and Ms. Lansing. And when she attends the Women Leaders in Sports annual convention each year, Ms. Redmond said, “There's more energy, more growth, more women at more levels working in this field and I think we have to celebrate that. But at the same time, it’s been 50 years so we do need to keep our foot on the gas.” Ms. Beggs is working to do that through her position as AD and her seat on the NCAA Board of Directors. Her rise to that role was unorthodox, she said. She was getting ready to retire as a professor of marketing a year ago, when the university president asked her to be his interim AD for a few months. A year later she’s still there. And in that post she continues to work to promote women’s sports. She’s well aware that the number of women ADs is small. And she said even her own mother has had a hard time understanding why she works so hard at that difficult job. “I finally said to her the other day, ‘you realize there are 360 D1 (Division 1) ADs in the country, and I’m one of them, and even more importantly, there are 50 women D1 ADs in the country and I am one of them.’” She uses that position to influence such initiatives as the new NIL Rules that allow student athletes to be paid for their name, image and likeness to promote student athletes and equality. Women have been especially quick to take advantage of that opportunity to effectively promote their brand and the image, panel members said.

Men still dominate TV

One area where women's college sports continue to lag dramatically behind men is television contracts. “The men’s basketball tournament is worth $1 billion a year and $600,000 to $700,000 of that money comes back to our school,” Ms. Beggs said. “And that is an incentive for schools to invest in men’s basketball. That is not true for women’s basketball.” To help address that, she said, she and other members have asked the NCCA to start investing more in women’s sports. NCAA leaders promised to look at it, she said, “but to me, that’s the hard part. That’s where, as they say, the rubber meets the road, it's actually spending dollars on it so we'll see if we get there.” Another important way to increase the profile of women's sports, Ms. Lansing said, is to share their stories.  “Trying to grow interest, exposure, attendance, all of it, it’s always going to connect back to these student athletes to them being able to share their story because people are interested in that story,” said Ms. Lansing, a former track student athlete and Hall of Famer. Ms. Redmond agreed, “When you look at the women on our teams. When you look at the women who are competing this weekend there are so many incredible stories; stories of adversity; stories of resilience accomplishment. There’s just so much to celebrate and I think we just need to continue to give great care and attention to the narrative and how we tell it.”