When it comes to celebrating women athletes, Cari Champion wants sports fans to do better.
In her new limited series “The Making of a Rivalry: Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese,” Champion explores the ways in which racial bias and misogyny have fueled a hateful discourse between the two rookies.
“Since the beginning of the LSU Iowa game in 23, I really felt like there was a narrative being created that wasn’t there,” she tells PS in an exclusive interview. Champion is referring to the now-infamous “you can’t see me gesture” made by Reese at the NCAA tournament, which sparked a race-centered debate around sportsmanship and character. Since then, there has been an unrelenting mischaracterization of Reese vs. Clark, villain vs. savior.
“I think that everyone who is getting it wrong on the outside are concerned about the aesthetics of a woman who happens to be Black trash talking America’s darling who happens to be white on the court. They’re taking it off the court and adding their own personal bias,” Champion says.
“It’s a rite of passage to trash talk, especially if you win,” Champion continues. It’s part of what makes a rivalry interesting – and rivalries are a good thing. “Rivalries make every sport healthy. It makes every discipline healthy. It forces the athlete to be more competitive. It forces the league have different storylines and it forces people who love sports to be invested. It’s not a bad thing,” she says. A rivalry only becomes a problem when media and fans – many of whom are newcomers to the W, Champion points out – come into the sport, injecting race and discrimination into the conversation.
Champion wants to explore what’s really going on in the way we talk about Clark, Reese, and the rivalries between women athletes. “We can’t look at it as simple as jealousy, or these women are being fair to Caitlin, or Angel is a villain. We have to not evaluate on such a superficial level; we have to really really dig,” Champion says.
“There’s a slow reluctance in this society to let women be athletes.”
And that’s exactly what she intends to do with this podcast, which will welcome guests like Jemele Hill, Sarah Spain, and former coaches of both players. “I want to do a deep dive on how we view people, especially in sports, through our own lens,” Champion says. “But [the series] also talks about what I believe these two young ladies can do. I think that they’re very well aware of the world that we live in and they have ownership over this narrative, and they can change a lot.”
So much of the negativity being placed on the rivalry is also coming from a gendered lens, Champion argues. “I’m fascinated to see why the media has been able to portray these women in this way,” she says, recalling a similar pitting against and policing in the Maria Sharapova vs. Serena Williams tennis era. “I do believe it’s just an indictment on our society and how women ‘should’ be. For so long women’s sports was covered in a way that they only talked about who the hottest chicks were. They never really talked about what they did on the court, on the field, when they ran track – it was more about the aesthetics of it,” Champion says. “There’s a slow reluctance in this society to let women be athletes.”
While spectators are calling out W players for being mean and tough, there’s a glaring double standard for those in the NBA. “You’re not saying that when you’re watching Draymond Green or when LeBron is dunking on somebody. What’s the difference here? It simply is just gender,” Champion says. “And unfortunately, when a lot of people talk about this sport – and men especially – they have the wrong filter, they have the wrong lens.”
Ultimately, she wants people to step back from the debate and spend more time listening – and uplifting the game, rather than tearing it down. “I would love a world where all of us just didn’t have opinion, and we listened to the nuance and consider the other side,” she says. It’s important to also take time and learn about the context and drive of the WNBA, she tells PS. In doing so, “I think these fans will realize that at the end of the day these women – Caitlin and Angel [and] everyone in the sport – are true athletes and ferocious competitors.”
If she has one wish for listeners of the podcast, it’s that they “walk away with an appreciation for both ladies . . . and we allow women in general, to compete as athletes,” Champion says. Outside of this specific rivalry, “my hope is that [listeners] really just become interested in the storylines, because there’s so many more storylines than Caitlin vs. Angel.”
You can listen to “The Making of a Rivalry: Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese” from the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeart’s Women’s Sports Audio Network below:
Alexis Jones is the senior health and fitness editor at PS. Her passions and areas of expertise include women’s health and fitness, mental health, racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, and chronic conditions. Prior to joining PS, she was the senior editor at Health magazine. Her other bylines can be found at Women’s Health, Prevention, Marie Claire, and more.
