TRAILING THE PACK UCONN WOMEN ATTRACTING TRUEST OF FANS BOTH HOME AND AWAY.Byline: Ramona Shelburne Ramona Shelburne is an American sports journalist currently writing for the Los Angeles Daily News. Shelburne was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She attended El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, California where she was a class valedictorian. Staff Writer Jack Romanowicz said he has a pretty good handle on his addiction to Connecticut women's basketball Women's basketball is one of the few games which developed in tandem with men's. It became popular, spreading from the east coast of the United States to the west coast, in large part via women's colleges. - most of the time. This is despite listening to two Internet radio Listening to audio broadcasts via the Internet. There are more than 4,000 broadcasts available on the Internet that can be streamed and played by a software media player in the computer or in a stand-alone Internet radio with the software built in. broadcasts of the same game to ``get the other perspective.'' And spending $40 a month for a high-speed cable modem cable modem Modem used to convert analog data signals to digital form and vise versa, for transmission or receipt over cable television lines, especially for connecting to the Internet. for the sole purpose of watching Connecticut on TV. And driving 400 miles from his home in Phoenix to watch the Huskies play tonight at Pepperdine and Sunday at USC An abbreviation for U.S. Code. . All of that, he admitted, might be a little much. But Huskies tickets are a rare commodity - 100 consecutive home games at 10,167-seat Gampel Pavilion in Storrs, Conn., and the 16,294-seat Hartford Civic Center Current arenas in the American Hockey League Eastern Conference Western Conference Arena at Harbor Yard | Broome County Veterans Memorial Arena | Cumberland County Civic Center | DCU Center | Dunkin' Donuts Center | have sold out since December 1997. ``I've been waiting for eight years for an opportunity to see them live, and this is the closest they'll be until next year, when they play Arizona State,'' said Romanowicz, a 52-year-old Web site designer. ``I used to be a pretty big baseball fan, but I got turned off after the strike (in 1994). Men's basketball is just too much one-on-one for me, so it was really nice to find this group of amazing young women to latch onto.'' This kind of fervor for a collegiate team, let alone a women's collegiate team, is foreign to Angelenos, who live in such a crowded sports and entertainment universe that minor college sports barely register in their consciousness. But in Connecticut, which often is referred to as a suburb of New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. and Boston and has no professional sports The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page. teams of its own, UConn basketball is the biggest show in town. The NHL NHL Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, see there did have a franchise, the Hartford Whalers The Hartford Whalers were an American professional ice hockey team based in Hartford, Connecticut. Known as the New England Whalers when they were members of the World Hockey Association (WHA) from 1972-79, the club played in the National Hockey League (NHL) from 1979-97. , in the state until 1997, when it moved south to become the Carolina Hurricanes The Carolina Hurricanes are a professional ice hockey team based in Raleigh, North Carolina. They are members of the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL). . ``We have a passionate, wonderful fan base that creates an atmosphere unlike any other place in the country,'' coach Geno Auriemma Geno Auriemma (born March 23, 1954 in Montella, Italy) is an Italian-American basketball coach, best known as the head coach of the University of Connecticut Huskies women's basketball team, in which capacity Auriemma has led the Huskies to five National Collegiate Athletic said. ``It would be hard to replicate it in a big city like New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of or Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. because there's so much going on there and college sports seem to get pushed to the background. But here, UConn basketball is our version of the Lakers.'' Senior Diana Taurasi - last year's national player of the year - summed up the phenomenon: ``It's just nuts. The fans are maniacs. They know their basketball. You go into the basketball office and you wouldn't believe the number of letters we get from people all over. I've even gotten fan mail from people in prison.'' Taurasi said she was sold on the school when she went to a sold-out exhibition game on her recruiting trip. At UCLA UCLA University of California at Los Angeles UCLA University Center for Learning Assistance (Illinois State University) UCLA University of Carrollton, TX and Lower Addison, TX , her second choice, there were maybe 1,000 people at the exhibition game she attended. ``L.A. is a real wishy-washy kind of town,'' USC senior Ebony Hoffman said. ``There's so much going on here. You really have to win, like the Lakers, for people to come out and watch.'' Rebecca Lobo, who won over many fans in 1995 as she led UConn to a 35-0 season and its first national championship, said she first attributed the ``phenomenon'' to the long, cold Connecticut winter and the state's lack of big-time college football or professional sports teams. But now that UConn's football team has moved to Division I, she's changed her opinion. ``It's never gone out of style,'' said Lobo, who lives in the state and has become somewhat of a cult figure there. ``I think it's become one of those things where you grow up in Connecticut and being a UConn men's or women's basketball fan is just part of the culture.'' And tickets to UConn women's basketball games aren't cheap. Costs for the seats themselves don't include the ``donation'' one has to make to the school's athletic department just to be put on the ticket list. Even intrasquad scrimmages, which are free, are huge draws. This year, 9,700 fans showed up. And when the team goes on the road, opponents regularly have their biggest crowds in school history. A few years ago, the alumni association organized a road trip for the game at Boston College. Sixty-six buses came. This week's trip to Southern California is a homecoming for Taurasi (Don Lugo High of Chino Chino (chē`nō), city (1990 pop. 59,682), San Bernardino co., S Calif.; founded 1887, inc. 1910. It is the business and processing center of a diversified farming (notably dairying) area. ) and forward Willnett Crockett (Narbonne High of Harbor City), and both games are expected to draw big crowds. USC reports it has sold 5,500 tickets. There are still seats left for the Pepperdine game, though the school expects it to be a sellout with purchases at the ticket window. Not even a blizzard Dec. 30, 2000, kept UConn fans from the Civic Center for the team's annual showdown with Tennessee. More than 14,000 attended UConn's 81-76 victory. For big games such as that, it's not uncommon for tickets to be scalped. ``It blows my mind how big it's gotten,'' said Meghan Pattyson Culmo, who played at Connecticut from 1988 to 1992 and now is the color commentator for the team's television broadcasts. ``One time, Rebecca Lobo and I are walking outside the arena and I go, 'Holy cow, Rebecca, people are outside scalping tickets Ask a Lawyer Question Country: United States of America State: New York I have recently purchased tickets for a concert taking place at Madison Square Garden in NYC. Unfortunately, I will be unable to attend. .' I just laugh because when I first came here, we played in the Fieldhouse and got, like, 200 people to our games. ``(Associate head coach) Chris Dailey taught a jogging class back then and used to offer extra credit to people who came to the games. We'd all have to beg our friends and boyfriends to come and watch. One time, we got 1,200 people to a home game and we thought we were big time. ... I have special appreciation for how big it is because I remember when nobody cared.'' Pattyson Culmo and Auriemma pointed to the 1991 season, when UConn made its first Final Four appearance, as the year the team's popularity began to grow. The explosion came in the 1994-95 season, when Connecticut Public Television Connecticut Public Television (CPTV) is a statewide public television network, providing PBS programming in Connecticut. Stations As of 2007, the CPTV stations are: Station City Analog Channel Digital Channel Founded began airing every game, and the Huskies won the first of their four national championships. ``I still look around and laugh because I went to games when they used to get 300 to 400 people out to the Fieldhouse,'' said Carl Adamec, who has covered the team for the Manchester (Conn.) Journal Inquirer since 1989. The newspaper is one of seven that regularly travel with the team. An additional 10 to 15 papers cover home games. Lobo said she had no idea how big the program would grow when she entered as a freshman in 1991. ``All of a sudden, I'm no longer this exceptionally tall girl walking through the mall,'' she said. ``Now everyone recognizes me as a UConn basketball player. It's like this huge extended family just adopted you.'' Now, with tickets difficult to get, many supporters follow the team via television. All of the women's games not on CBS (Cell Broadcast Service) See cell broadcast. or ESPN ESPN Entertainment and Sports Programming Network are televised live by local public-TV station CPTV CPTV Connecticut Public Television . This year, CPTV re-upped its contract for five more years. The station is paying $600,000 for the rights this year and that fee will go to $1 million by the final year of the contract. ``The women's basketball telecasts are the most successful fund-raising venture we've had,'' said Harriet Unger, executive producer of CPTV's women's basketball broadcasts. ``We fund raise during games, at timeouts, at halftime and offer different UConn items for a membership. This year, we started offering the team media guide and it's the most popular item we've ever had. There's nothing like it on public television anywhere else in the country.'' Indeed, CPTV broadcasts of UConn women's basketball games regularly draw a 15 rating or 33 share in the greater Connecticut area. For comparison, the ``Monday Night Football'' game between the New York Giants
To meet the national demand for UConn women's basketball, CPTV entered into a partnership with Real.com to stream the television broadcasts over the Internet for $40 a season. ``There's a man in Japan, ... (who) was just elated when he found out that he could watch the television broadcasts on the game over the Internet now,'' Unger said. Romanowicz hasn't yet ordered the streaming television broadcasts. For now, he can wait a few days for his sister, Nancy Pfaff, to mail him game tapes. Pfaff, known affectionately by her screen name, HuskyNan, on the popular UConn Internet fan site she administers, is a mother of two young boys from Wallingford, Conn., a small town about 15 miles north of New Haven. ``The women's fans are not your typical sports fans, but they feel like they've adopted these kids,'' said Bob Fuedo, the executive director of the alumni association. ``The men's crowd is a more traditional big-time sports crowd. The men are superstars and pretty much unapproachable to the public. The women are much more like your daughters, sisters, friends, and people really identify with them. They call them 'our girls.' '' And once a player becomes one of ``our girls,'' Pfaff said, they are part of the family for life. ``I only follow our girls in the WNBA WNBA Women's National Basketball Association WNBA World Ninepin Bowling Association WNBA Wannabe Nasty Boys Association WNBA Women's National Book Association, Inc. WNBA Warszawski Nurt Basketu Amatorskiego , but not the league itself. I've never been to a WNBA game,'' she said. ``But we know when someone's hurt in the WNBA or who they're dating. ... The players are good people, the kind of young women I hope my sons meet someday. They'll sign autographs cheerfully and they'll do it for hours.'' And UConn has more than its share of autograph seekers. But Adamec remembered one for whom a signature simply wasn't enough. ``Rebecca Lobo went to get a haircut and some guy goes, 'That's Rebecca Lobo's hair, right?' '' Adamec said, recalling an incident from 1995. ``And he scooped it up and put it in a plastic bag.'' Ramona Shelburne, (818) 713-3617 ramona.shelburne(at)dailynews.com No. 1 UConn at Pepperdine Today, 8 p.m. No. 1 UConn at USC Sunday, 2 p.m. CAPTION(S): 7 photos, box, map Photo: (1 -- 4; 1 and 3 -- color) Of the rabid support UConn now enjoys, senior Diana Taurasi, left, said: ``It's just nuts. The fans are maniacs.'' The scenes below prove Taurasi right. Alan Mothner/Reuters Associated Press file photos (5) For sports Connecticut fans, Sue Bird and the women's basketball team offer winning entertainment. Eric Gay/Associated Press (6) Jack Romanowicz, a 52-year-old Web site designer, will drive about 400 miles to see UConn play in Southern California. Photo provided (7) no caption (UCONN Back-to-Back National Champions) Box: BY THE NUMBERS Map: Storrs Gregg Miller/Staff Artist |
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