A Rarity in Women's Basketball; Duke Leads the Way

I have a serious academic interest in sport and in this column I’ll be highlighting current events, sharing resources, reflecting on complex issues and sharing athlete’s stories among other things. For more about me, you can read my first post, here. Please feel free to email me with thoughts or if you come across something you’d like me to include on the blog.

Basketball season starts this week. Friday, to be exact. That's tomorrow, for those of you thrown off by fall break starting our week on a Wednesday. For most Duke students, that probably means attending Countdown to Craziness, painting our faces in blue and white, losing our voices and engaging in traditional cheers all for the first time this year (or if you’re a first year, your first time ever). If you’re a manager for one of the basketball teams, it means working a three hour practice (which means working for at least four hours, mind you), filling up more water cups, chasing down and rebounding more balls, wiping up more sweat, and resetting the shot clock more times than you have during the previous four weeks of preseason work outs. And if you happen to play basketball for Duke, it means surrenduring your soul social life for the remainder of the school year (and you thought the school year just started!).

So, what’s that have to do with anything? Well, every so often Duke Women’s Basketball releases a question and answer style update on the life of a former player. Most (though not all) of these “Catching Up” pieces ask a question about the alumna’s spouse and kids. It’s a pretty heteronormative question and I always wondered if they only asked it of straight athletes (I sort of figured that they only asked it if they knew that person was in fact married, though I don’t know this for a fact). But what about a player who was in a committed same-sex partnership? Would Duke Women’s Basketball ask former players they knew to have a partner about this aspect of their lives, the same as they ask their straight counterparts? Or would it be a matter of reporting on the relationships of the straight athletes while simply not reporting on the “love lives” of any LGB-identified former players, thereby ignoring any same-sex relationships?

My skepticism isn’t unfounded. Women’s basketball—both the professional and collegiate ranks—along with other women’s sports—has a sort of complicated relationship with the LGBTQ community. The WNBA, for instance, is notorious for highlighting on their website and during telecasts the weddings, kids and spouses of straight players while never mentioning the commitment ceremonies and partners of LGB-identified players. This is a different issue than the internal culture of teams—though they’re not necessarily totally unrelated to one another. But as advertising/fan outreach goes—it’s rare to see coverage of an LGB-identified athlete which acknowledges their sexuality. I want to recognize that it’s possible that this lack of coverage is at the request of the athlete, but I have a hard time believing that every athlete falls into this category [especially considering that it occasionally comes up in other, non league/team related publications, but then is never highlighted on that league’s/team’s website, the way that other news releases and articles are indexed]. This isn't unique unto the WNBA. It's the story across the board.

Well, I’m here to applaud Duke Women’s Basketball, GoDuke.com and Nicole Erickson! This June, Duke Sports Information posted a question and answer feature called “Catching up with Former Hoops Player Nicole Erickson.” In her interview, Erickson mentions her partner of nine years multiple times!

When GoDuke asked her “Do you have a spouse and children?” She answered that “I have been in a nine-year relationship and we have two weimeraner dog kids :) Gracie and Guinness…” Earlier in the interview she mentioned that she and her partner are partial owners of two restaurants. Check out the full interview here.

Erickson played for Duke during the 1997-1998 and 1998-1999 seasons after transferring from Purdue (along with fellow former Boilermaker Michele VanGorp [also openly gay]) following the 1995-1996 season (she sat out during the 1996-1997 season per NCAA rules). She helped lead the team to its first Final Four and championship game appearances in 1999 (to get there, Duke defeated three-time-defending Champion Tennessee) and was named to the Final Four All-Tournament Team. [Side note: Duke played Purdue, Erickson and VanGorp's former school, in the championship game.] She was also named to the all-regional (NCAA tournament) teams during 1998 and 1999. During the 1998-1999 season, Erickson was tabbed ACC player of the week on at least two occasions and was an All-ACC selection each of the two years that she played in a Duke jersey. At the time she graduated, she held the school record for number of three pointers in one game (7) and the number of three pointers in a season (62) [ten years later, she is tied for record for number of three point field goals in one game and is fourth in number of three point field goals made in a season]. During her Duke career she shot 88.0% from the free throw line, which is still the best in ACC history and her 32 consecutive FTs (in 1999) is still the longest FT streak in Duke history.

I've detailed some of the complexities between women's sports and the LGBTQ community in other posts (Elena Kagan comes to mind) and could probably write a lot more about it than what I'll say here. Despite all of the complexities between women's sports and the LGBTQ community, though, there are promising signs of a time when women's sports won't feel like it can't talk about LGBTQ individuals in sport. I'm proud that Duke is already moving in that direction.

The season starts Friday and Duke Women's Basketball has more to be proud of than the fact that the team's five first years make up the top-ranked freshman class in the country, Jasmine Thomas continues to rack up the honors (named a preseason first team All-American and to the watch lists for the Wade Trophy and Wooden Award) and national publications rank the Blue Devils as high as sixth (and as low as eighth) in the country (though, those are pretty awesome accomplishments, too).

[Author's note: In the interest of transparency, I spent my freshman year as a manager for the women’s basketball team and have since resumed my responsibilities after not holding the job last year. Also, thank you to Duke Sports Information for providing me with accurate up-to-date statistics on Erickson's career.]

“At Thanksgiving, it’s the turkey next to the kabob next to the hummus.”

I wish you could have been there as Ari shared his life with me. He comes from a Republican family in a town of 7000 people in Long Island. His high school was mostly white and Jewish, and by the time he graduated, was only out to four people. As we learned from last week’s blog entry, he didn’t like being closeted in high school since he didn’t have anyone to talk to about it.

Ari is a Jewish Israeli, with a mom from Tel Aviv and a father who served in Lebanon for six months. His family came to the United Stated based on persecution, so even though he does not consider himself very religious, he still feels very strongly about Jewish ethics and culture. “At Thanksgiving, it’s the turkey next to the kabob next to the hummus.” He remains very curious about his background and where he comes from, he says he knows it sounds cliché but “as an American I’ve become very detached, but I want to know more about my family.”

He spends his time reading and doing work (and watching films, as we know from his great film reviews on this blog). From how he talks about his shows, I can tell he watches a lot of TV too. Our interview was long and detailed and wonderful and he rattled off a list of his favorite things: The History Boys movie (Chris is going to make fun of him for this) [Ed. Note: Yeah, I am. This is The Weirdest Movie, Ari.], In Cold Blood, Into the Wild, The Smiths, his grandma’s food, New York pizza and bagels…

Ari is sensitive and hilarious but he showed a different side of himself when we sat down to talk. Granted, I don’t know Ari incredibly well in the first place, but it was great to listen to him wonder about the future. “I look forward to knowing how everything pans out. Where am I gonna be working? I don’t even know. It sounds so cheesy, but who am I gonna be marrying in Greenwich Connecticut and then going to where they accept me. I look forward to my parent’s acceptance as much as their growing process. I know my parents, I know what their reaction is gonna be. I want to see where my indecisiveness leads me.”

Our time together was interrupted due to the BDU meeting that was starting but I was able to get a little bit more information out of him. We talked about regrets, and he acknowledges that he’s going at his own pace so he doesn’t regret coming out sooner. He mentions that he regrets not being closer with his brother, but as he was saying this he realized that it’s definitely something he can still change. (So change it!)

One thing I do every night is think about three things I’m thankful for, so I ask this same question of my interviewees. Ari says, “Today I am thankful for my close friends here and at home, I’m thankful for (this goes back to the Jack thing) the LGBT students that are so comfortable with themselves, and I’m thankful I’m done with my history class.” I’m certain that we’re all thankful Ari is in our lives and I hope that he can continue to be a strong individual and be that beacon of light for some new individuals who are learning how to come out with their heads held high.

"If it's one of my main identifiers, I shouldn’t feel bad about that. I don’t think it’s so bad." -Ari Bar-Mashiah on being gay

As I've done with several Duke students younger than I am, I have watched Ari transform into a strong individual, one who is much stronger than he realizes. Ari isn’t out to his family, but still provides an incredible force in our community at Duke. He rattled off a list of reasons to me about why he hasn’t come out yet to his family but he knows most of them are just excuses. We’ll all have our fingers crossed that Ari can have the strength this Winter Break to finally begin the conversations with his parents and siblings.

He’s a self-described social butterfly, but anyone who knows him would agree. In high school he was involved in many activities, but was only out to a select few. Although there was a GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance), Ari refers to it as SAG, the straight alliance for gay people. No one identified as gay. He didn’t like being closeted, but always had a hard time reconciling the way gays are portrayed in the media. He didn’t think people could be intelligent and gay at the same time.

Coming to Duke, and particularly his experiences with Project Build, paved the way for Ari’s integration to the LGBT Center and it’s social activities. For Ari, the LGBT community at Duke was much more than he had at home and for that he is “very, very thankful.” He says, “You wish there was always more, or at least, more out. If I would want to see something, I would want to see more gay couples holding hands, the peck on the cheek when they go to class on the Plaza. When it comes to the community, they’re not to blame. It’s the other students, and the stuff we have to deal with, like ripping down flags, it’s the bridge incident or the bench incident. I really love the LGBT community here.”

Ari takes a moment and gives tribute to another Center frequenter. It was so sweet and so true it needs to be shared here in this blog. I believe we should all take a moment and think about those we look up to and pay tribute wherever we can.

“There is no one here that I appreciate more in the LGBT community than Jack. By far. By far. By far. Jack has allowed me to feel more comfortable with myself, because I see how comfortable he is. He’s so unafraid. People can be inspiring in so many different ways, by being active and forward and political, and you see them being proactive. Jack is the silent fighter, he doesn’t have to say a word. It makes me so much more comfortable to come here.”

Ari is great at making people laugh and finds ways of relating to everyone. I asked Ari what his favorite LGBT event was at Duke. Here’s what he said: “You know what I fucking love? Fab Friday. I love Fab Friday. There’s so many good things at once. It’s Friday, I just got out of classes, and I see all these amazing people. You see people that you may only see once a week. And Jack makes great food.”

I know we’re all grateful for what Ari has added to our community, and it truly is a joy to see him grow and learn from the other wonderful people who support him.

Stay tuned to learn more about Ari next Thursday, and I promise there will be photos next time (y’all know how busy the last week of classes gets, cut me some slack!).