My Life On The Sidelines

(This is my longest blog post yet.  You've probably heard the saying "When you make it big, make sure you remember the little people."  The Seattle Storm winning the WNBA Championship this past week was a big moment for me... so I'm taking the time to remember some of the people who were there along the way.)

On Wednesday, September 12, the Seattle Storm won the 2018 WNBA Championship.  They battled the Washington Mystics in the Finals to conclude, in my opinion, the best year of WNBA basketball yet... and I've been watching for at least fifteen of their 21 seasons. I've previously written about how I feel at the end of a basketball season here... but as a recap, for me, the end of a season is always sad... a period of mourning... even with a championship! Standing on the court after the win as WNBA President Lisa Borders presented the Storm with their trophy, there were tears in my eyes.  Tears of pride and joy and relief and sadness... so many emotions!

The 2019 season can of course be amazing, too, but it will never be the same. This year, the Storm led the WNBA standings pretty much all season, league-wide there was incredible basketball, more media promotion, increased awareness and fan support, and continued exposure for players to promote their causes to make the world a better place. My role as the team physical therapist was similar to past years, though I was able to attend more practices and also spend more time in the front office than in previous years working on some different projects.  The WNBA is so important... at the end of the day, the league is about much more than just basketball.  Changes from previous years were palpable. Beyond great competition, the league also had new partnerships with their “Take a Seat. Take a Stand" initiative - I just love this video:

Everyone in my circle knows how much I love basketball and how grateful I am for the opportunities I've had from working in sports.  I was excited the Storm ended up playing against the Washington Mystics because it gave me a chance to visit my brother who recently moved to D.C., but also because Coach Thibault was my first WNBA Head Coach from 2007 until 2010 with the Connecticut Sun, and I have immense respect for him and his family - so it's always great to see them having success, even though it ended in our favor.  After Game One of the WNBA Finals, I saw the whole Thibault clan leaving the arena, had the chance to catch up, congratulate them on their recent successes, give hugs... and reflection mode started to kick in.

It's a little weird, right? I work in the athletic training room and the weight room and I stand on the sidelines watching, rarely touching a basketball, but I'm still reflecting. What went well this year? Did I make an impact? Does the time I spend with the Storm have any value for them?  What should I change next season? How can I do more? Is the balance of my job at Seattle Children's and my time volunteering with the Seattle Storm working out for everyone?  Will the team keep me on their medical staff next season? How mad will my family be when they hear me tell them (again) that I'm not moving back home to Connecticut because this is where I want to be? But mostly, I think, how did I get here and is this the path I’m meant to go down?

Each year I've been with the Storm, (this was my fourth) I've had a few people reach out - usually high school or college students - asking me if I would share my story because they aspire to have a role like mine.  They're seeking career advice.  Young women want to know that they can work in professional sports, even if doesn't mean they're going to be a professional athlete. I'm always happy to share how I got here, and I like to give people hope.  I wanted to play in the WNBA as a little girl, long before I realized I was never going to be a basketball player... but look how close I came to my childhood dream?!  I'm in a rare position... more than half of the WNBA teams don't even have a physical therapist listed on their staff - and most of the teams that do have a PT, the same person is their athletic trainer.  There just aren't that many opportunities to work in professional women's sports. So, knowing I'm in a unique role as a female physical therapist working for a professional women's sports team, I'm going to share my journey and tell you all that I'm working hard to create more opportunities for women in sports medicine... so keep working, and keep hoping.

My Life On The Sidelines:
(This spans 19 years... so maybe grab yourself a cold drink and get cozy before you start reading?)

I grew up in Connecticut. In 1995, I was nine years old when the University of Connecticut Women's Basketball Team won their first NCAA Championship.  People's Bank gave away free posters that had Gampel Pavilion in the background with Rebecca Lobo, Jennifer Rizzotti, and Coach Auriemma and it hung on the wall of my bedroom.  I played rec basketball and watched UConn on TV, because that was starting to be possible.

Four years later, in 1999, I was a freshman at Cheshire High School, still in Connecticut. I went to the girls basketball team tryouts which started with a meeting where the head coach outlined his expectations for the season.  Following the meeting, instead of getting changed to try out, I asked him if he could use a team manager.  I don't think I’ve ever said this to anyone before, but the truth is I really wanted to play basketball. I had zero self confidence, I weighed almost 250 pounds at age 14, I didn't exercise, I didn't eat well, I had only played a little rec basketball before then, and I didn’t think I could make the freshmen team... so I took myself out of consideration without ever trying. It was cowardly. I’m still ashamed. But I loved the game, and this was how I was going to be part of it.

On my first days at practice as a high school team manager, I yelled at some of the varsity girls to run faster during practice. The senior captain at that time, Michelle (Libby) Vieira, now the current Head Coach of Cheshire Girls’ Basketball and also a great friend told me that she immediately thought “Who does this kid think she is?”  I just wanted to win... while sitting on the sidelines.

When basketball ended, I met with the softball coach. Again I wanted to play... but I was committed to Hebrew High School on Wednesday evenings that conflicted with many of their games (and with Dawson's Creek - which aired on Wednesday nights and starred Cheshire native James Van Der Beek. Hebrew High School really got in the way of my life!). So I planned to be the softball team manager.  A few days later, I was sitting in Rich Pulisciano’s (2018 Nominee for National Boys’ Lacrosse Coach of the Year and all around awesome guy) freshmen health class when he said I was his new team manager.  He was pals with Girls' Basketball Coach Sarah Mik and somehow had decided to steal me from the softball team. I didn’t actually know what lacrosse was, but I never made it to a day of softball.

Fast forward a little bit. I sat on the sidelines (or scorer's table) for every Cheshire Girls’ Basketball freshmen, junior varsity, and varsity game for four years. In 2001 and 2002, my sophomore and junior years, we lost in the Connecticut State Tournament Quarterfinals. I don’t really remember games, though.  Or practices.  I remember the people.  I remember bus trips, pizza parties, playing Cranium, crazy hat days, hanging out in Coach Mik's office, and decorating lockers.  I remember gel pen notes and movie nights... doesn't every teenager hang out at the movie theater? I remember having friends because I was part of a team, which is why I encourage so many patient families to get their kids involved in ANY sport.  And I remember my pal Brittney Arisco tearing her ACL, not knowing until many years later that it had impacted me so much. (Wrote about that a little bit in the past, too, here). That was the first time I saw someone tear their ACL in front of me... unfortunately it wasn't the last.

I only worked with the varsity lacrosse team.  I'm not sure why I loved it so much... but those guys were the best.  They always gave me the front seat on the bus as the only girl surrounded by a group of guys with the worst smelling equipment ever. It's the gloves. Gross. They taught me to never drink the yellow Gatorade.  They drove me home in their beat up cars, proud that they had just gotten their driver's licenses. They were polite and respectful to me, they made their moms proud.  And talk about talent! In June 2002, the Cheshire Boys Lacrosse team won the Connecticut State LL Lacrosse Championship. I still have the coin from the toss for that game.  That was the first championship team I ever worked with.  #RamPride

2002 Connecticut State Champions - Cheshire High School Boys Lacrosse

And then senior year came around.  One of the basketball coaches asked me if I wanted to dress and play in the game on senior night, but we had five seniors, and... ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Of course I did not do that. I sat in a special beach chair at the end of the bench with a non-alcoholic frozen beverage with an umbrella in it, under a beach umbrella with a blow up palm tree, holding my stat clipboard, wearing a pleather skirt, and, you guessed it, held back the tears in my eyes.  Or not... they flowed freely.  I wear my heart on my sleeve.  Emotion can also be redefined as passion.  I'm full of that.

After high school was UConn. I was one of the team managers for the greatest women's basketball team and the best college coach and associate head coach of all time, Geno Auriemma and Chris Dailey. #GOAT Four amazing years of sitting on the sidelines.  My freshman year was Diana Taurasi’s senior year- the team was coming off back-to-back national championships and would go on to win a third consecutive trophy that year.  (Ironically, the Seattle Storm have three UConn players on their roster, but none of them were in college with me... though I did meet all of them in Storrs long before ever working with them in Seattle.. and all three participated in my graduate school thesis.)  Again, I mostly don't remember the games... I remember the friends I made, the other managers being some of my closest friends, still, hotel nights, team meals, chartered airplanes, selection show parties, and falling down the stairs at Coach Auriemma's house on New Year's Eve.  One game, the managers And I were trying to get into the locker room, and a security officer said we couldn’t go there because it was only for the team. I yelled “We are the team” because we had work to do... the sideline crews always become a team in their own way, a part of it but also quite separate. I remember them winning the National Championship freshman year... I was sitting in a packed Gampel Pavilion watching it on a huge TV screen.  That week, the UConn Women and UConn Men's basketball teams both won their Final Four and National Championship Games so basically we spent a whole week watching amazing basketball in Storrs, CT.  When the team won, I again cried... and I wasn't even with the team. And there were three graduating seniors who I had grown to love.  #BleedBlue So now I had gotten to work for a team that won the High School State Championship and another who won the NCAA title.  Unbelievable.

2004 NCAA Women's Basketball Champions - University of Connecticut

Fast forward to senior year- April 7, 2007- I was in my hotel room in Fresno, California getting ready to go to the Elite Eight game where Sylvia Fowles and her LSU team ultimately whooped UConn to go to the Final Four when my cell phone rang... it was the Head Athletic Trainer for the Connecticut Sun, Jeremy Norman, offering me a job as their Equipment Manager and Travel Coordinator. I was already discussing a similar opportunity with the Seattle Storm when he called, but moving to Seattle before graduation seemed impossible and the Sun just made so much more sense!  I took the job. When UConn lost that night, my college basketball chapter ending, me - again - in tears, a fellow team manager gave me a hug and said “Cheer up, Abby, you’re going pro tomorrow.”  Ha! We took a red eye charter flight home from Fresno and I was at my first team staff meeting at Mohegan Sun the next night, sitting a few seats away from Coach Mike Thibault.

I LOVED working for the Connecticut Sun. It was my first real job out of college. They were pretty good, but not great. I remember we lost a few games in a row and had a record of 5-10 and Coach Thibault called me into his office and asked me what was wrong. The four previous years, the team I worked for had never lost back-to-back games.  In fact, UConn Women's Basketball only lost nine games total while I was in college!  We had just lost 10 games in 2 months.  I was struggling.  Did I mention that I was the Equipment Manager... and I was getting depressed over the team losing? The Sun ultimately made the playoffs, losing in Indiana in the first round including a first game triple OT win, the only triple overtime game in WNBA playoff history. It was the beginning of another four seasons on the sideline. I spent my first off-season in Spain with one of their players, who was traded when we came back to the USA.  That was the when I learned about basketball as a business. #GetSun

I left the Sun when I realized that I would be doing laundry for basketball players forever if I didn't figure out what to do with my future.  Ultimately I landed back at UConn for graduate school to study Physical Therapy.  Fortunately, they had an incredible faculty member, Dr. Lindsay DiStefano, who was working on ACL Injury Prevention research and was willing to advise me on writing my own thesis project studying leg injuries in Women's Basketball Players at the college and WNBA level.  This project really interested me - as I was sure that basketball players were tearing their ACLs because they weren't stretching. I was wrong.  But the project kept me in contact with all my colleagues in the WNBA over the years I was in grad school, which was vital for my future.

I had been fearful upon leaving the Connecticut Sun that I wouldn't be able to get back into the WNBA because many of the teams didn't have a PT.  As graduation approached, I reached out to everyone I knew in the league.  Seattle Storm Head Athletic Trainer, Tom Spencer, who also owns a PT Clinic, had an opening in his office, but the Storm had never had a PT before.  I arrived at his clinic wearing a boot on my left leg from having had an ankle reconstruction surgery eight weeks earlier.  Tom treated my ankle - which got super swollen from the cross-country flight - while he interviewed me.  Talk about an interesting interview!  I had not yet taken the PT Licensing exam.  I had not yet treated a patient independently.  All I wanted was basketball, and I was willing to move 3,000 miles to get that.

After the interview, Tom took me to Key Arena for the Seattle Storm versus Chicago Sky game which he needed to work that night.  I'm good friends with the Sky Strength and Conditioning Coach, who hugged me as we bumped into each other walking into the arena. The timing of that was helpful.  Tom didn't say anything about what I was supposed to do while he worked.  I quietly sat in the corner (no really, I was quiet!) watching how things operated in his training room.  The chiropractor introduced himself - Dana McCracken - best chiropractor name and all around nice guy.  And then Sue Bird walked in.  I don't think Tom realized I had met her ten years earlier and that our paths had crossed countless times.  We're not friends, but she knew me well enough to give me a hug and ask me what I was doing there.  I told her I was interviewing with Tom for a job in his clinic. She looked at him and said - to be with the team, too, right?  He told me after the game that her reaction was enough for him to hire me on the spot. Four seasons later, I watched her win her third championship. #WeRepSeattle

2018 WNBA Champions - Seattle Storm

So that's the journey.  I hope you'll notice that it's really all about the people.  Career advancement occurs because of the people you surround yourself with.  I have awesome supervisors at Seattle Children's who support me working towards my dreams on the basketball court.  I give my time away in an effort to elevate women's sports and, hopefully in the future, to provide more opportunities for women who want to work in sports medicine.  I've worked with some of the greatest athletes in the world.  I've posted three championship photos above, and I worked on the sidelines for all three of those groups... but you may notice I'm not in a single one of those photos. I know my role and I cherish that. The advice I give to young people aspiring to work in professional sports is to meet new people and keep on working hard.  Give of your time doing things you love and the rewards will come.

Coach Auriemma used to send me to get him a hot tea almost every day for practice. Soon after the team won the National Championship and the season was over, I picked up a tea and went into his office.  I asked him how he measures success.  He told me it wasn't about the Championships, trophies, rings, awards.  It was about the fact that his players come back to visit.  I've heard him say this since then, too. His former players choose to look back and cheer for the young teams still playing in the same jersey they once wore.  Players who don't want to look back and connect with the places they came from or the coaches they played for - that says something about their past.  I still swing by the Cheshire High School Gym and Gampel Pavilion and Mohegan Sun Arena when I get a chance to, because there are connections there that will forever be part of my heart.  The first text message I received sitting in the stands on Wednesday night, just after tip off, was Sarah Mik.  My High School Coach sent me a text saying "Where are you sitting?"  I didn't tell her I was going to be there.  I hadn't talked to her in about two weeks. She just somehow knew it.  And my heart skipped a beat knowing it started with her almost 20 years prior.  I turned to my brother and told him it was about to be the biggest night of my basketball career.  And it was.  The basketball world is a family, and though my role in it is small, it has been an awesome ride.  I've received far more than I can ever give... and I couldn't be more grateful.