Finding joy in the shadows
by Bruce Baskin
July 2, 2007 - Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA)
Seattle Storm
When it comes to low-profile sports in America, there aren't many with a lower profile than Gaelic football. As the name suggests, Gaelic football is an Irish sport, and is wildly popular there. Crowds of 40,000 at Dublin's Croke Park are not uncommon for this rugby-like game that incorporates elements of soccer, basketball and volleyball. However, in the United States, it's far more likely that 40 spectators are going to show up for a match than 40 thousand, most of them fans or friends of the players. Although the sport is an exciting blend of speed and power that has been played longer than almost any other outdoor sport, Gaelic football is barely a blip on the domestic sports radar screen, typically ignored by the vast majority of American sports media and fans.
And Kate Starbird couldn't be happier.
Ten years ago, the graduate of Lakes High School in Lakewood was the most prominent and dominant player in women's college basketball, an All-American and national Player of the Year at perennial powerhouse Stanford. Starbird was heavily recruited while playing for Lakes, but narrowing her choices of colleges was as much as matter of hitting the books as hitting the backboards. "My father was adamant about the fact that basketball was ânot going to buy me lunch,'" she says, "so he made sure I concentrated on academics throughout my high school career. When I graduated from Lakes, Stanford was an obvious place to look at because it was both a great school and coming off a national championship, so as soon as I got a recruiting letter from them, I pretty much knew where my heart was." Although she also considered two other highly reputable schools, the fact that she still had to go through the entire application process to get her scholarship at Stanford approved cemented her decision to go there.
Stanford made three Final Four appearances during her four years in Palo Alto, where Starbird was a two-time All-American pick and the 1997 NCAA Player of the Year after averaging 20.9 points per game her senior season to finish as the school's all-time scoring leader with 2,215 points. She became the center of a hot bidding war between the brand-new Women's National Basketball Association and the one-year-old Seattle Reign of the American Basketball League. She said that, too, was an easy decision. "The ABL had a team in Seattle, I wanted to go home, I had already been to a lot of ABL games in San Jose, and I really believed in what the ABL was and had to offer. I have never, ever regretted that decision. My two years in the ABL were my best professional years in terms of enjoyment and really believing in the product that we had." Starbird's signing with the Reign included a heavily-attended press conference at the base of the Space Needle with a multitude of media members and then-Seattle mayor Norm Rice on hand.
With all the hoopla and attention she got returning home to play pro basketball, Starbird also had very high expectations placed on her shoulders, not just with the Reign, but for the entire ABL, a player-oriented league that found itself in a life-and-death struggle with the better-funded WNBA, which was entirely owned and operated by the men's NBA. "It wasn't so much the return to Seattle as it was the publicity surrounding my return to Seattle," she remembers, "and perhaps the location wasn't solely to blame because I felt these same expectations throughout my early professional career in many different cities." Those expectations served to take away the fun she had always had simply playing the game. "There were incredible benefits, but they were accompanied by a different kind of pressure, and perhaps an erosion of the pure joy I experienced playing basketball at the college level."
Midway through her second season with the Reign (for whom she was averaging 13.6 points with a high game of 25), however, the ABL ceased operations and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy three days before Christmas in 1998 after external pressure from the NBA finally took its toll. Starbird says, "I look at it now, and I understand business from that perspective, and that's exactly what it was. The NBA was doing business, and they won. But if you look at the WNBA now, most of the owners are private who aren't a part of the NBA, and it's beginning to look much like the ABL in terms of market sizes and smaller arenas."
After the ABL folded, Starbird began a six-year stint in the WNBA, playing for teams in Sacramento, Utah and Indiana, as well as a return to Seattle with the Storm. However, she did not experience the success in the WNBA that she'd had at Stanford and in the ABL. After playing in the WNBA during the summer and overseas in the winter early in her career, Starbird spent the past two seasons playing solely in Spain prior to retiring from pro basketball this spring. "My body could no longer play year-round, I had a really good time overseas, and I didn't even bother trying out for the WNBA anymore," she says. "I just decided to finish my career over there. It's a different game, it's still professional, but it was refreshing to be around people that are so happy to be out on the court. In a way, professionals kind of get that beat out of them, but it was different in Spain. With all the questions and concerns about the future of the Sonics in Seattle, Starbird hopes the WNBA can keep a team in town even if the NBA leaves. "The Storm fans really do care about what we have going on there. Once again, if you look at the business behind it, it does not make sense to move the team away from Seattle."
Back home in the Seattle-Tacoma area for good, Starbird has turned more of her attention to playing for the Seattle Gaels women's team, which she also manages. She's been playing Gaelic football ever since she was in school. "My sister was dating an Irish bartender for a while, and she got involved with some of his friends in Gaelic," Starbird explains, "and she told me it was a lot of fun and that I should come watch them play. I went to a tournament and watched a match, and told a basketball friend who was with me, âWait! We need to be out there! I could do this game.'" Although she was initially confused by the rules, she attended a national Gaelic football tournament her sister was playing in the following year. "They gave me a uniform and taught me for 30 minutes before the game, and then they sent me on the field," she relates, "and it was SO fun for me. Basketball was great to play as a professional, but once you do something professionally, there's a certain amount of pressure and expectation on you. To be able to go out on the Gaelic field, I could kick the ball wrong or the ref kept calling me for things and it didn't matter because it was such a joy to be out there with no pressure and no expectations. And this was at a time in my life, late in my WNBA career, that if my free throw hit the rim on its way to the basket, I became frustrated with myself. In Gaelic football, if I made a mistake, who cared? I laughed."
Starbird's team plays as part of the Irish Heritage Club of Seattle, which also sponsors men's teams Gaelic football and hurling, another longtime Irish sport that resembles field hockey and dates to that country's pre-Christian days under the Celts. In addition to playing, part of her managerial duties for the Gaels is player recruitment, which she says has gotten a bit out of control. "We set out to recruit about 10 new players, and it just sort of took off on its own. People just keep bringing friends." Starbird adds, "We had someone jump in from the audience during an informal game, and she tried to sign up officially before the afternoon ended. We're seeing a ton of organic growth, and it's great for our club and the sport."
The Seattle Gaels will be hosting an all-day Gaelic football and hurling tournament Saturday, July 21 at Redmond's Marymoor Park, and potential players and sports fans alike are welcome to attend for free. Whatever happens that day, Kate Starbird will be in the middle of the action: "Gaelic football has given me the freedom to be my 10-year-old self again, though with slightly sore knees and much longer stretching sessions."
Women's National Basketball Association Stories from July 2, 2007
- Finding joy in the shadows - OSC Original by Bruce Baskin
- Finding joy in the shadows - OSC Original by Bruce Baskin
- Storm Weekly Forecast - Seattle Storm
- Fever Update - Indiana Fever
- Jia Perkins Named WNBA Eastern Conference Player of the Week - Chicago Sky
- Jackson Earns Second Player of the Week Honors - Seattle Storm
- WNBA Players Of The Week - WNBA
- Chicago Sky Weekly Update - Chicago Sky
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s), and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.
