The Sweating Will Continue Until Morale Improves with Big Citrus

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain. Where pride isn't a month in women's sports, It's a year round way of life. So happy last day of June. We're all going to be just as gay tomorrow, Yes all of us. Everybody's at least a little gay. It's Tuesday, Jude thirtieth, and on today's show, Big Citrus jumps on to talk about a record breaking conversation starting headline dominating week in the WNBA. Plus I share what I was up to in can France. The unbearable heat, the glamorous parties, the smart conversations, and two straight days screaming bitch stole my look at an American treasure. Plus a historic amount of free basketball records galore, and one pro hits a speed bump in a meteoric year. It's all coming up right after this welcome back slices. Here's what you need to know today and a little bit of ketchup from the past week. Let's start with some WNBA action from over the week weekend. On Sunday, the Washington Mystics best did the Portland fire one twenty four, one twenty three in four overtimes, tying the longest game in WNBA history. Sonya Citron put up thirty two points, including the basket that put her mystics up for good. Carla Late led Portland in the losing effort with thirty two points. She's the one who forced the first overtime with the last second banked three that even she couldn't believe she made. Also on Sunday, Asia Wilson had thirty points, fifteen rebounds for steals and three blocks to lead the Las Vegas Aces past the Chicago Sky one oh seven ninety nine, and the Minnesota Links ended the weekend on a high note two beating the Dallas Wings eighty five seventy seven. Links coach Cheryl Reeve now has three hundred and seventy nine regular season career coaching wins, tied for the WNBA record. More w all eyes will be on Brooklyn tonight as the New York Liberty take on the Las Vegas Aces for the Commissioner's Cup Championship. The two teams are the winningest w teams over the last three seasons, and while the Aces are the defending league champs, the Liberty defeated them eighty seven to seventy six in Vegas just last week. It's going to be a tough battle and a really good mid season check in for how each team performs under pressure. Plus there's a five hundred thousand dollars prize pool on the line. Tip Off is at seven pm Eastern. You can watch on Prime Video. A whole lot more hoops headlines to get to big Syptress is going to talk about in just a few to the PWHL. After being acquired by Las Vegas during the expansion process and immediately traded to Detroit, Hillary Knight has signed a contract extension with Motor City through the twenty twenty eight twenty nine season. While we're still bummed to see Night depart Seattle, we're excited to hear that we should get at least three more years of her, and we're crossing our fingers that she gets more than one year in the same spot to create culture and build fandom. Speaking of legendary hockey greats, we learned last week that Marie Philip Puhlen was playing on a torn acl when she helped the Montreal Victoire hoist the Walter Cup earlier this year. She actually sustained the injury, draining the preliminary round of the Olympics back in February, which explains why she missed two games in Milan before coming back for the knockout round of the Games, and also missed a chunk of Victoire games before returning to play and helping them to the title. Pulen is said to have surgery to fix her ACL in July, and she'll be out for the foreseeable future while she rehabs more hockey. The PWHL announced last week that its first ever outside investors have signed on. Up until now, all of the league's funding has come from Mark and kimber Walter. Now, the Walters will be joined by Kilmer Sport Ventures, led by Larry Tannenbaum, who's also an investor in the WNBA's Toronto Tempo, and Ilich Companies, led by CEO Chris Ilich, who's CEO of the NHL's Detroit Red Wings. The league said the new partners will provide expertise, relationships and perspective, but the single entity ownership structure will remain in place, and the Walters and the PWHL's advisory board will continue overseeing operations. And speaking of Mark Walter, the La Times reported that Walter, who's also the owner of MLB's Los Angeles Dodgers, has divested his stake in Geo Group, a private prison operator that's the top contractor for ice detention centers. You may remember in a previous show, we told you that Walter's investment firm, Guggenheim Partners, previously owned more than one million shares of Geo Group. He has reportedly now sold all of them, following protests and petitions organized by Dodgers fans. To soccer, the NWSL is still on a league wide summer break, but two teams did see some action on Friday. Gotham FC won the twenty twenty six NWSL Challenge Cup in Columbus, Ohio, defeating Kansas City two nil with goals from Astera Gonzalez and Jordan Dudley. It's Gotham's first Challenge Cup win in franchise history, after finishing as runners up in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty four. You'll remember, the Challenge Cup is an annual competition between the regular season winners and the title winners, assuming that those are two different teams. Oh In, speaking of Gotham, the reigning NWSL Champs have officially signed Australian legend Sam Kerr, luring the backflipping superstar back to the NWSL after nearly seven years with Chelsea in the Women's Super League. And that's not the only NWSL contract news. Gotham also re signed Emily's Sonnet to a contract's extension through twenty twenty eight, and Kansas City Current extended the contract of their TEMVP tem Washawinga through twenty twenty nine. To tennis, the first round of Wimbledon started on Monday, but before the world's top tennis players could hit their first serve, some news from off the court. Leading athletes called off their pre tournament media protest. Players including Arena Sabalnka, had said they would limit their media activity to fifteen minutes to protest unfair prize money, as they had done at the French Open earlier this month, but in a statement on Monday, the group of players said their representatives had constructive meetings with tournament organizers over the weekend. The statement says the underlying matters remain unresolved, but Wimbledon has committed to addressing the concerns. The world's top five women's singles players are all in London for the tournament, but it's twenty three time Grand Slam winner Serena Williams who will capture most of the attention here in the first round. The legendary players returning to singles competition through a wildcard entry, her first singles match in nearly four years, she'll take center court today against Maya Joint, a twenty year old Australian currently ranked number fifty three in the world. Williams will also play doubles with sister Venus beginning Thursday to the pool. US Olympic champion Gretchen Walsh broke the world record in the fifty meter freestyle on Sunday, get into the wall in twenty three point five to five seconds at the Seta Collie Meet in Rome. The record comes just nine days after Walsh's former University of Virginia teammate Kate Douglas broke the events record in Indianapolis. Before that, Sweden Sarah Soystrom had held the record since twenty twenty three, so seeing it broken twice in less than ten days is kind of bananas. Walsh and Douglas still trained together, and after seeing her mark bested so quickly, Douglas posted a photo of Walsh on her Instagram with the text was fun while it lasted and a handshake emoji to golf. Nellie Corda came up short of history on Sunday at the Women's PGA Championship at Hazeltem National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota. Coorda, the top ranked women's golfer in the world, ultimately finished tied for eighth after struggling on the greens all day. She had been attempting to become the third woman to win the first three majors of the year, but in the end it was heyron Y of South Korea who made history, finishing thirteen under to win the tournament and the first major of her career. You earned the honor of being sprayed with champagne on the eighteenth green after her winning putt. Coorda, for her part, now plans to relax for a couple days before heading to Europe for two more majors later this summer to the trails, where ultra marathon stars are not typically made overnight, but this year at the famed Western States one hundred miler that's exactly what happened in her first ever attempt at the distance. Jennifer Lichter won the race in fifteen hours, twenty eight minutes and five seconds, breaking the course record by about ninety seconds. Now there are fast times across the field, aided by uncommonly cool weather in northern California where the race is held. There's a fascinating Runners World article on Lichter's story and how she's found freedom on the trails. We'll link to it in the show notes. And one more piece of running news. Before I left for France, we told you about the scary incident involving Olympic medallist and retired US track star Jenny Simpson, who collapsed after running at an event in Raleigh, North Carolina. Now an update on what happened last Friday. Her employer Fleet Feet shared that Simpson suffered a sudden cardiac arrest on the sixteenth and received immediate life saving care. The good news is that she's now been released from the hospital and is recovering with her family sending our best to Jenny and we're wishing her a smooth, full recovery. All Right, we got to take a break. When we come back, Big Citrus gets to yappin' WNBA records and rants and life on the Coat Desour. It's all coming up right after this. Welcome back slices, Alex Bianca get in here. Hey guys. Hello. It feels like every time I take a big trip where abroad or I'm unavailable to comment, there is something that happens in the w that requires comment. This time it was the Caitlin Clark Alyssa Thomas incident, the suspension that followed, and the reactions from just about everybody. So everyone was waiting for my reaction and asking what I was going to talk about and where I was going to talk about it. So I finally broke down and made a video on my last day in France. We'll link to that Instagram video in the show notes if you want to see the full ten minutes on it, but i'll kind of recap what I said, and I wanted to talk to you all about it too, because there were so many opinions and headlines and people yap and about this. This, of course, was Alyssa Thomas getting a flagrant two foul penalty after the game between the Mercury and the Fever and getting a one game suspension as well. She made contact with Caitlin Clark in the second quarter of that game. It was kind of a weird play if you watched it live. Caitlyn sort of stumbled and then fell, and then Alissa fell, and then she kind of used Caitlyn's neck and throat to like push up off of to get back down the court, but was already sort of looking away. The still shot of it looked real bad, but the live shot, to me, seemed a lot less egregious. And I feel like it's so important to say that because so many of these stories that really go crazy in the WNBA and then expand to folks outside of the w and lots of talking heads tend to be rooted in a short highlight or a screen grab with a narrative behind why that's being shared, and not a full grasp of either the clip, the game, the ecosystem, the entire women's sports space. Right, It's like the conversation needs to be so much more nuanced and thoughtful than what that still shot will indicate. And so we ended up with yet another Caitlin gets fouled, the entire league is against her, everybody hates or she should probably spin off and have her only conversation, and it's just so disappointing that this happens every single time. My biggest takeaway was just essentially that we need to stop letting people who don't care about the league and aren't invested in its future the way we're interacting with it in the present, because it does change how we see and talk about and enjoy this game that we all love when we're constantly getting diverted to have fights and arguments with people who I don't think really care about the league at all. If anything, they might care about Caitlin, or they might just care about getting in fights about Kaitlyn.
00:11:22
Speaker 2: To be frank, if they cared about Caitlin, they would know how to spell her name at this point.
00:11:28
Speaker 1: Fair, it's a fair point for many of them.
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Speaker 2: But if you're still going with the yn at the end instead of the I like, get it together, unforgivable Yon.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, Like I said, you can go watch my full ten minute ran down it. But I'm curious what y'all think about it and if there's anything that we still need to say these many days later.
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Speaker 2: I think where I would start is, you know, we sometimes hear from listeners of like don't give this more energy, don't give this more attention than it deserves. And I struggle a little bit when something like this breaks through to the mainstream in a way where it's like all of these uneducated people are talking about it, and I feel like we need to discuss it in order to be the voice of reason in the room and to make it clear that we're aware of what other people are talking about. But I struggle with that of like, is our talking about it making the space better? And I think for me, my biggest s takeaway is like I'm not having fun, Like none of this is fun.
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Speaker 3: And I think that those conversations are completely warranted to have, Alex, the conversation that you're talking about, struggling to know is this?
00:12:35
Speaker 1: You know? What is this adding to the space?
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Speaker 3: And I think as the media landscape gets filled with different kinds of people having an audience, I think that conversation needs to continue. You know, listeners can decide who they tune in to listen to and whose opinion is they value, But who I really want to hear from at this point is the league and the officials. And why was it not called Why was that voul not called? In real time. Why is there one game suspension? That's who I'm looking for in order to really move this conversation forward, especially with the context that we have that maybe not everybody commenting on this, you know, in Alyssa's DMS has, is that this is such an ongoing conversation in the league about officials not having a clear point of view.
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Speaker 2: I think to your question, Bianka of why haven't we heard from the league and why this wasn't called as a foul in the moment, I thought Jeneo Gumikay made an excellent point in an ESPN segment over the weekend, and she mentioned that Caitlin and Alyssa are both players that you know, will tend to get into it with the refs and like make a fuss if something happens, and after that play, both of them got up and continued as if nothing had happened. So I think that's the reason why it wasn't called in the moment, is because it kind of just looked like a basketball play. I think that there's a much larger conversation about how the WNBA needs better officiating in general, which comes back to paying officials better, which comes back to training them better, which comes back to the fact that the MNBA has a huge resource center in Secoccus, New Jersey that the WNBA doesn't have access to in the same way. And so it's all of these issues. But I think of all of the things where if you were only to judge it on a screenshot, like I don't know if anyone else has ever tried this. This is such a silly example. But you know when you watch a video and then you screenshot it and it's like, my face looks awful right now. That's like, imagine you and your worst moment, Like that's what this screenshot feels like. And I think it's a fair foul. But oh gosh, I'm tired again not having fun.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think Cheney made great points about how none of the players on the court seem to react in any meaningful way after the play because it was bam, bam bam, and like I said, it was a loss of balance, it was another player falling. And also she made the point that Elissa Thomas is very physical and often physical in her play, and Caitlin occasionally exaggerates in games to draw the foul when you so combine those, it makes it very difficult to call in the moment in the second without the benefit of replays and still shots and everything else. And to your point, Alex, if they were to stop every w game and look for a still shot where it looked like somebody was getting assaulted, which is the word people keep using, they would find it over and over again. It's a full contact sport. And that's not to say that after the fact calling this a flagrant two is wrong. I think it's right because they are trying to lower the instances where players might be injured, and whether it was intentional or not, the result was that Elissa Thomas's close fist was on Caitlin's throat, and the way the league is trying to call now is that flagrant twos, regardless of intent, are opportunities for potential injury and they want to limit that, so they're going to call those. Bianka. To your point about wanting to hear from the league, I think that's the main thing. It's the inconsistencies across Occasionally a player will get ejected mid game for a flagrant and then they won't get suspended later, as if to say they already lost whatever portion of that game they were ejected from. But there's also been instances where players have been later assigned to flagrant and neither suspended nor ejected at the time, and then in this case, she does get suspended for a game, presumably because she wasn't ejected. So there's no clear idea of when or why or how they're making these decisions, and that lack of consistency is what allows for all of this debate. It would probably still happen around certain people, in particular Caitlin Clark, because the narrative before she ever played a w game was created by people that she was a target, that people were jealous, that people were going to treat her differently, and then that only came to bear more when there were physical plays that were outside the bounds of sport. We saw the Kennedy Carter play in that initial season that very much was not a basketball play, that was not defensible in any way, but it fed into an existing narrative and allowed for people to now be looking for these moments over and over again and repeating these very unfun conversations and running these clips legs of pruder films, and that all comes to the WNBA's inability to be consistent with calls, which is very difficult. There is not a single professional sporting league where people agree that the officials have got it. But especially because so much of the off season, gms and coaches and players were told that the goal for this season was to make play a little less physical and to reign in some of the physical, dangerous plays, and that hasn't been the case. I think that's why frustration is at such an all time high.
00:17:26
Speaker 2: And to your point about how the league could learn from this moment, I think about the PWHL and that league. They send out an email every time that there's any type of supplementary discipline. It includes a video link of the moment in question, and it includes a list of the people that are on the p WHL committee that are making this decision. And that level of transparency is something that I think is crucially important, especially when I searched back through years of emails at this point and I could only find one time that the WA and sent an email about a flagrant foul and it is this most recent one that we are talking about, And so the league itself is telling people this is important, this is not normal and it's worthy of your attention when they send an email for this moment, but not for any of the others. And so it feels like something where the WNBA would really benefit from having a system like that.
00:18:24
Speaker 1: It's a classic.
00:18:24
Speaker 3: If you don't fill in the reasons, other people will fill in the reasons for you.
00:18:28
Speaker 1: And that's what's happening now. Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Alex And to your point, Bank, I think that's why, to come back full circle to the beginning, why it's still useful to talk about this stuff. I apply the same rule I used to apply on Twitter back in the day when it was still worth being on there and engaging with people. There are the people who are the loudest that are going to comment to agree with you. There are the people that are the loudest that are going to comment to disagree with you, and you're going to engage with them the most often. But in the middle are hundreds thousands, hundreds of thousands of people that are digesting and taking in all the information that they get online without necessarily commenting, So you might not be aware of their presence as often, but they're just as valuable and in the case of these incidents around the WNBA, particularly involving Kaitlyn Clark. There are so many people who don't have their mind quite made up yet. And if all they see is the same loudmouth people trying to get clicks and paid to enrage you by telling you that the entire league hates Caitlin and they have an agenda against her and they're trying to hurt her, then they're more likely to think, well, that's what I keep seeing, so I guess that's what must be true.
00:19:29
Speaker 3: Right.
00:19:29
Speaker 1: You need to have thoughtful, calm voices of reason that are also saying, here's all the reasons why this is true, or this is the case, or this might be different. Here's the nuance from decades of watching the league. You know, for instance, there are all these people saying Caitlin is the only one that gets these kind of fouls. Anyone who watches the league knows that that's not true. Now, she's gotten a higher percentage of flagrant fouls, especially in her first season, she drew more of those than other players, But much like other dominant top players, there's a number of reasons why folks are coming after her. Number one, you have to start guarding her from half court and you have to get tight against her, so you're more likely to cause contact. Number Two, she's being presented to you as the number one play on the other team that you have to stop, so you kind of make it your goal to stop her and prove that you can stop her. And number three, there was commentary before she entered the league that might have pissed some players off. I'm not saying the whole league. I'm not even going to tell you which ones because I can't get inside their brains. But when Christine Brennan, for instance, interviewed Brianna Stewart and then said that Stuart sounded jealous by not agreeing with the thesis that Caitlin Clark was the best player in the history of NCAA basketball, that pissed people off because those who actually know college basketball know that Brianna Stewart is the only player to win a title in every single year and be named the most outstanding player in every single year. So why would someone who didn't win a title or a most outstanding player be considered the greatest of all time when you're asking the very person who might have been. And even Brianna Stewart would tell you that she is not unequivocally the best ever. There are arguments for a number of other great college players when you've sent her into the league unfairly, I believe by some of those journalists, there are players who are just going to get a kick out of making sure you knock her down a peg? Is that right? No? Is that sports? Yes, every sport that's ever existed, in every single rookie that's ever entered a league with a whole bunch of hype.
00:21:24
Speaker 2: You know, are you saying athletes are competitive or something?
00:21:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like these women want to win. It's crazy. I loved that opera coming out in You, Sarah. That was amazing. I'm trying to allow us to have more fun while we talked about these shitty topics time. Okay, so I think we've covered this, and yet we will cover it again. The last thing I want to say is that the only way to have any forward progress is to have expectations for ourselves and others. As fans choose your battles, you're just creating more engagement and more clicks and more views. When you with people in the comments who don't have any intention to have a real engagement on this topic.
00:22:05
Speaker 3: Right.
00:22:06
Speaker 1: The expectation for the league is to be clearer and more communicative in their decision making and to get out ahead of these things. And the expectation for journalists is to prioritize the league and its players and women's sports over their own personal gain, which is clicks or reads or engagement or whatever else. And in the video on Instagram, I refer back to my conversation with Christine Brennan. I still don't really know what her ultimate goal is with some of the articles that she writes and the language that she chooses.
00:22:35
Speaker 2: It's to sell books.
00:22:37
Speaker 1: Well, probably, and that's what I said in the video. I mean, it's probably to sell books. But at this point we've so lost the plot on selling her Caitlin Clark book based on the latest things she's writing and the erasure of women's sports that's required to continue the narrative that she's pushing, that even that seems like a tenuous connection between the work she's producing and the book she's trying to sell. But yeah, I mean the number of people who reach out to me and ask like, what is the goal here or how is she still doing this? I don't have any answers for you. I asked her all the questions when she came on the show, and if you didn't listen, I very highly recommend going back and listening to my conversation with Christine Brennan from season one, because I think there's a lot in there, not just about her choices, but about the league and how it needs to be covered responsibly that everybody could probably benefit from hearing.
00:23:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, sadly, it's still extremely relevant.
00:23:25
Speaker 1: Okay, So now that as usual, that's dominated the majority of our time instead of talking about the fucking awesome shit that's happening in the w I do want to at least mention that during the week that we were sort of half off, we were producing shows but not doing need to knows. Every day shit went off. Okay, Olivia Miles, who is frankly insane. If you are not watching Olivia Miles, she is so freaking fun. But she became the fastest player in WNBA history to reach three hundred plus points at one hundred plus assists. She did it in eighteen games. That's one game better than both Caitlin Clark and Paige Beckers. They did it in nineteen and Olivia Miles has been an We knew she was fantastic at the collegiate level. She has instantly become one of the best players in the w helping the Links to the top of the WNBA standings despite so many players leaving, despite Nafisa Kall, you're still being out Like holy shit, Cheryl reeve you Lucky duck right into your lap another generational player. I totally agree.
00:24:19
Speaker 3: And in a year where Azy Fudd is the number one draft pick and we have the caliber of Asy Fudd and a number of other amazing uh you know, even formerly pro rookies, Olivia Miles to me is well on her way to Rookie of the Year.
00:24:36
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.
00:24:37
Speaker 1: I'm not the only one putting her name in that hat.
00:24:39
Speaker 3: And I'm also not the only one putting her name in the hat for another award MVP.
00:24:46
Speaker 1: Woo. Can you imagine what are we a third of the way through almost half.
00:24:53
Speaker 3: I just think that if you are a rookie and your name is even being considered for that conversation, which it is, then I mean that's a clear runway to Rookie of the Year, and I just think deserves Flowers yeah, yeah.
00:25:06
Speaker 2: You guys know how I like hypothetical questions after our last World Cup conversation, But I'm curious if you think, do you think that if Nafisa had started the season healthy, we would be seeing the same level of excellence from Olivia or do you think Nefica's injury required her to step it up more than she would have otherwise.
00:25:24
Speaker 1: It's a particularly interesting question because at the beginning of the season, we talked about how it might be a disappointment for Olivia Miles to not have the guard forward play with Nefisa that she could. That we were like, oh, what a bummer. We can't wait to see that one two punch and the way she'll be able to facilitate with someone who draws the kind of gravity and energy that Nefisa does, And instead we've seen a whole different sort of bag out of Olivia. So it would be different, for sure. You can't argue that it wouldn't be different if Nefisa was out there. But I almost feel like what we're going to see when Nefisa does come back is just an acceleration of what we've already seen, and in a completely different way. She's already facilitating and serving her teammates in a really spectacular way. But with Fee in the middle there and the kind of poll that she'll have in terms of the defense, will we see Olivia be even more in her bag on the perimeter because they won't be able to focus on it the same way. Yeah.
00:26:16
Speaker 3: I think that ultimately at the end of the season, we will have a better Olivia Miles because Naviisa Collier wasn't playing in the beginning than we would have if Navisa Collier was playing the whole season.
00:26:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, wh just wild. Okay, while we're on the topic of records and quickest two and everything else, I do have to shout out Camilla Cardoso because as usual, the Chicago Sky are disappointing. I was really excited we got odd players and things were gonna be different, but they're not still not very good. But Kamila had a freaking crazy game. They beat La Portland Fire one twenty four to ninety four, and she set a new WNBA record for most shots taken without a miss. She went thirteen for thirteen with thirty points that same game, which was Courtney vander Slut's first game back. This guy also set a WNBA record for most assists in a game. They had thirty eight, and so it's kind of fitting that they did that on Slut's first game back, because she's of course the number two all time in w assists, only behind SUPERD. So getting Sloote back should help. And Camilla clearly, if she can be as efficient as she was in that one, they'll be better. I don't know. And the pista resistance, which I'm using in particular because we're talking about the chef here, Chef Marina Maybury first, before we even get to the Crazy Night. On Friday, she sets a career high with thirty seven points and hit nine three pointers, which is tied for a WNBA single game record. That was in the Tempo's win over the Connecticut Sun. The team also made nineteen three pointers as a team, so second most in a regular season game in WNBA history. This is just like records, record records. Then her next game, she's like, thirty seven, that's not that impressive. Let me go ahead and hit fifty three, ties the all time regular season record. And I love that Sandy Brundello left her in the game. She went for two threes that she missed to try to break the record and then took herself out with the minute left. Was like, that's good, I'm done. But the content from the team and her teammates and the fifty three written on a piece of paper like Welt Chamberlain, like, just Marina Maybury is cooking. Yeah, And if you are not watching her, And I said this in the video about Kaitlyn Clark, because I'm like, if you like Kaitlin Clark, have you seen Marina Maybrey. She is shooting from five feet behind the three point arc with three people in her face and less than half a second of reaction time to get it up. She's practically shooting it like over the shoulder half the time, and it's just drain, drain and draine. It's so fun to watch. I couldn't like. I was watching the highlights and I was like, this looks like.
00:28:44
Speaker 3: AI, Yeah, these kinds of games are I love them, And I love these kinds of moments for women's sports, for Marina Maybrey herself, because even if you have never watched a w game, hell a basketball game in your life, that's the kind of stat where you're like, oh, I can tell that's good. Like if you've never run a mile in your life, you can tell a four minute mile or whatever is good. This is kind of thing that will break through and hopefully draw more people into then becoming you know, actual fans.
00:29:16
Speaker 1: But damn amazing. I completely agree. I'm like fifty three points. You don't need to no shit to know that that's amazing. All Right, we got to take a quick break. When I come back, I talk about my celeb filled week in can France. It's coming up next Welcome Back Slices. So the jet lag has not hit yet, but I'm sure it will. I did go to sleep at like three am almost every night in France, so I feel like I was just easing my way back to this time. Oh and I don't know if I mentioned this on a previous show, but the reason I was going to can France was for Sport Beach, which is this annual sort of boondoggle where all these different ad execs and marketing people and partners and sponsors and teams and leagues and individual athletes all go to the south of France and do panels on the beach, and then there's all these activations and parties and events that sort of surround that hub that is called Sport Beach, Alex Bianca, I need to tell you some of.
00:30:15
Speaker 2: The highlights, yes please, Okay.
00:30:17
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna warn you now, just be dropping names left and right, just be forewarned.
00:30:22
Speaker 2: Well I know most of them.
00:30:24
Speaker 1: Probably maybe we'll find out. I'm just gonna tell you first all the fun, amazing things I did, and then I do have three kind of takeaways from the incredible time. But again fast and furious on the name dropping in my apologies, but it was a record heat wave in France, so just picture that everyone I'm describing here is pouring sweat and potentially on their second to third outfit change of the day, because it was literally the hottest day in the history of France while I was there, and France was the hottest place on Earth one of the days when I was there, So keep that in mind as I'm telling you how many things we packed into a day.
00:30:58
Speaker 2: Did the sweat at least make some of these people like less intimidating?
00:31:01
Speaker 1: I did appreciate when certain people were sweating. I was like, you're a human. And then other people like Eva Longoria, who did not ever sweat, I was like, what's happening. This is not fair. So like, one of the first things I did was get drinks with Flavor Flav and his manager, Rhiannon, who's awesome. She's just fantastic, and we got to break down all the amazing fun stuff that's gonna happen in Vegas for SHE weekend. So that was a blast and just being reminded, you know you and I Alex saw Flavor Flav walking down the street in the middle of Italy during the Olympics and just the energy that he exudes and then pulls back to him because of people's enthusiasm about meeting him. Seeing that in a different location also in Europe, but walking down the streets of can and just watching people celebrities and regular folks that like losing their minds, just a constant room of yeah boy everywhere he went, and then everywhere Flav went, he would constantly be like we outside, we outside, and we're like, we don't where porings went. I did a panel with Candice Parker and Carolyn Braff from Gatorade and Julie Andrew and we talked about how to get women into coaching and got a lot of great feedback on that and I'm really excited to keep expanding on that with the Sport Beach Women's Leadership Council that I'm on with them. But that was at Sport Beach, which is this massive set and stage right on the beach, and right upstairs from that is something called the Hang that Gatorad sponsored all week, and it was all women's sports conversations in a smaller space. So Candae Parker, Super Meghan Rapino, Hillary Night, all these different athletes going up and creating sort of a curated conversation with everybody who was up there about a variety of different topics, which was really cool because you know, in some of the other spaces you could really tell where women's sports was still pretty novel for the people there. Right. It was one of those things where I felt like I should constantly sort of bring it up as part of a larger conversation if it wasn't already brought up. Whereas the Hang was really specific and drilled down into the ways that those brands and partners and athletes could all get involved in, like moving the needle.
00:32:55
Speaker 2: It reminds me of like in a conversation with somebody and you're not really sure how much they know the Women's Sports League, You're like the NWSL that stands for National Women's Soccer League, versus like being able to jump right in and be like, yeah, did you see the current Gotham game?
00:33:08
Speaker 1: Oh so real? Exactly, And that's actually one of my takeaways, which we'll get to in a moment. There was this amazing Deep Blue, which is Laura Crunty who helped start this I Hurt Women's Sports Whole endeavor. That's her like company that works to pair brands and sponsors and people with inventory and women's sports stuff. So they had a dinner with Axios and Autodesk and it was on this beautiful rooftop and it was this really interesting collection of a lot of people I'm used to seeing at women's sports events, like Midge Purse and Robin Arzone from Peloton and Sue Bird and everyone else. But then Anthony Ramos from Hamilton, who I was so excited to meet, Big Poppy, David Ortiz, Red Sox legend, Andrew Day, the singer who ended up performing on the rooftop. And when Laura was pregnant, she would always listen to the song rise you know.
00:33:55
Speaker 4: Alras Oh yeah, and so she was like gave this really impassionate thing about raising her daughter and in the world right now, needing to keep remembering to like just keep pushing and rising up, and Solenn Andrew saying and Anthony Ramols was like so moved, and then Flavor Flav was like urging her to sing more songs and like just on this rooftop.
00:34:16
Speaker 1: It was just a very cool scene. And then late night was Hotel Ducap, which is the Eden Rock hotel right on the tip of Antibue, and Questlove was spinning and so that was just like a really fun kind of capper. But yeah, so I went to bed at three am, and this is one day. That was one day, and I want you to know that was one day.
00:34:32
Speaker 3: I am dying at how glamorous this week makes it look being a podcast host. You know, you have a ton of other jobs too, but like this is an amazing slice.
00:34:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is what life is like for all podcast hosts. Right, well, wait till you get to Tuesday. It started with the Business of Women's Sports Summit at the iHeart Cafe, and I hosted a couple of panels on youth sports and on a bunch of like Emerging Spaces one of the really cool people to to talk to as one of the co founders of Sequel, which is the new tampon that's like innovating a market that hasn't been changed for a really long time, creating this like spiral like Technique who also talked to this women Becks from Crux, which is this new model of owning multiple women's soccer leagues across Europe, each team in a different league, and kind of innovating around the multi sport ownership model in a way that in men's sports oftentimes we're seeing the women be the secondary or even the tax break used by men's leagues to own the women under them. Instead, they're going around and buying a women's team in multiple different European leagues so that they can create facilities, data, branding, marketing, all the stuff specifically for the women so that they don't live under men's teams that aren't prioritizing them. I think I want to have someone from Cruks on the show because it's really interesting too how the model's completely different from NWSL, where now you have to be a billionaire to own, but on the European side, it's a much less expensive buy in, but the way they're trying to operate within the space. And then also you have to account for promotion. So if you buy a team and you only have X amount of dollars and then you keep getting promoted and getting better, the cost of business and everything goes way up. So it's like a promise of future spending that you need to be able to prove anyway. Okay, so just to keep going. Then I went back to Sport Beach with Noah Lyles, the Olympic goal medal winning sprinter and world record holder, and Loriola New York Times about look good, play good, feel good and the idea of confidence being a part of your training and not an ancillary aspect of who you are.
00:36:33
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Noah is such a good person to speak on that.
00:36:36
Speaker 1: Yes, but what was fascinating is you think of him only as this guy who is always like spouting off and talking smack and being super hyped, dripping in diamonds exactly. He talked about the amount of therapy that he went through and as a young person he had asthma an adhd and he didn't think that he was going to be super successful, and so it was an earned and practiced quality as opposed to an inherent one, and that, to me was the most inspiring part was how somebody at home hearing about how as a kid he didn't think he was special or didn't think he would achieve things, ended up becoming this guy who's now known for his incredible confidence, and also how we sometimes have conversations about that as being a distraction from the end goal of success, when in fact he considers it a part of his training and that the confidence and showing up and the pre race and the shit talking and everything else is part of the race for him. So that ended up being a really cool conversation. So then it was time for the iHeart Dinner guys. I hit it off with all of our fellow iHeart podcast hosts that I was so nervous about being I thought I was getting pranked when they said they were sending us all together. I didn't get to talk to Malcolm glad Well that much. He was kind of off on his own. But Eva Longoria and her business partner and I bonded on a million different things. She is such a huge invested sports fan. She's an Angel City owner, but she also has a lot of ties to other sports, and the way she wants to run her business and her content and create around women is so inspiring. And I get the feeling we're gonna be working together on a handful of things in the future. We've got some meetings set up, and just like, she's so impressive and so kind and nice and again doesn't sweat or ever look unattractive wild just truly one of those people that you meet like, oh, well, I know why you're super famous. You're so hot and wonderful and kind and smart and interesting. I ended up sitting down with Questlove and ho to Codpy for about forty minutes and we all just shot the shit and Quest and I bonded about consciousness and the brain and neuroplasticity and started sharing podcasts and books with each other. And Hoda asked me to do the like tell me your whole life in six minutes thing, and we started talking about all these different ways that we had like moved through the entertainment and hosting world and the things that had set us back and the things that had helped us move forward. And I just like was so impressed, of course by both of them. I always have been but everything everyone's always said about Hoda being America's sweetheart was like spot on. Also, this was sort of unbelievable to me. But Hoda and I wore the exact same dress on Monday, So thankfully we were not in the same place on Monday because exact same dress. Although it would have been funny and both of us would have thought it was cool, but we wore the exact same dress on Monday, and I'm looking at her instant I'm like, oh my god, hilarious. I've got to tell her tomorrow that we wore the same dress. This is crazy. Then we show up at the iHeart dinner wearing the exact same outfit again for the second day in a row. We were wearing a white suit with a like kind of beijor pinkish shirt underneath, and I was like, Hodah, first of all, bitch stole my look. And secondly, thank you to my stylist, for which I never have one. But I finally got when I was like, I guess he steered me right if I matched Hoda for the first two days.
00:39:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, seriously, wait, is he hodas stylust too?
00:39:36
Speaker 2: Like, what's the explanation?
00:39:38
Speaker 1: No, I we're just like super stylish and on trend is the explanation that when someone else tells me what to wear, I look good, which is another takeaway for later. But it was hilarious because I was like, Hodah, I literally was going to introduce myself to you, in part by saying, we wore the same dress yesterday and now we're wearing the same exact oubit again, which was so right. So after that was the watch party that Hodaan even I hosted for soccer game. That was an interesting other opportunity for the number of people I spoke to there who were watching this men's soccer to learn about women's soccer, where I assumed a level of knowledge that for a lot of the attendees wasn't there, right, And so getting the chance to kind of hopefully inspire some of these people to think outside of the spaces that they're already operating in that was a real eye opener for me in some cases. So after that, because I had hit it off with Questlove, he invited me to Questlove's game night in Camp, which was one of my goals for the trip was hit it off with Questlove enough that I get invited to a future game night, not a future one that very night. So I took my new friend who i'd met at a previous party, and we went to this mansion. And just to give you a little idea of who was at this party, Babyface, Dexter Fowler from The Cubs, Jenelle Monet, Andrew Day, Chuck d Flavor Flav, Jermaine Dupree, Ashley Graham, Jenna Lyons from Jay Crew. Everywhere you looked was another super famous person, two funny stories. Ashley Graham, who's a supermodel. For those who don't know, I've been using a picture of her for my eyebrow place for seven years. I can't believe how many times I've talked about eyebrows on this show. You can tell that they're a big part of my face. But there's this one photo for where her eyebrows kind of look like mine, and they're exactly what I want mine to look like. And so I got to tell her, this is very weird, but I've been showing this picture of you to my eyebrow place for seven years, and she thought it was hilarious. And then Janelle Monet, so in the movie glass Onion. First of all, I'm obsessed with her, and I got to tell you that she's incredible across a million different spaces and for so many different ways, and what she stands for and how she operates as an artist and as a creative is so moving at all times. But I was wearing these earrings and I bought them because Janelle Monne wore them in glass onion and they looked so cool in the movie in multiple scenes that I looked up online what earring she was wearing and then bought them. And they're more expensive than what I usually buy, but they're so badass. And I was wearing the while I was talking to her, and I was like, Janelle, I bought these earrings because you wore them in glass, and she's like, oh my god. I told her those earrings in the movie they look great.
00:42:07
Speaker 2: Wait, Sarah, what games did you play at game night?
00:42:11
Speaker 1: So the game tables were completely full. The only option would have been to pull another game off like a bookshelf to play, but there was no tables left to play, so it was more of a watching. I didn't get to play at this particular game night, Oh my gosh. And I was mingling and talking, so.
00:42:26
Speaker 3: I am now just imagining all of all the celebrities that you just mentioned, like what games were they playing, Because to me, Jenna Lyons would be playing poker.
00:42:35
Speaker 1: Like she is cool, she is cool. Yeah, she was playing Kaboom k Bomb. I don't even know this game. But the whole time, pretty much Janelle and Jenna and a handful of the people were playing Kaboom or k bomb or whatever. And then Dexter and Babyface and other people were playing spades, okay, and then I saw people playing Connect four and then I saw people playing Domino. Ooh, okay. So that was day two. Okay, I'll just sum up a couple of the things that happened after that. I got to meet Regina King, who is a queen and so gorgeous and not sweaty somehow and so kind. And I got to tell her that my favorite work she's ever done is an SNL sketch called weed Gummy. Now I do believe she's done other great work, but weed Gummy is one of those sketches I've watched a million times and stay stuck in my head. And she thought it was hilarious that that's what I brought up to her. I got to meet Anthony from Queer Eye and talked to him about how the show was literally something that I saved, episode by episode for when I most needed it during sad moments. And I just think he is such a cutie Patuti, and it was so nice to get to talk to him about the show. Colin Jost and Lindsay Vaughn were hanging out in the Sport Beach Room with me, so that was fun. I had to meet Jenny Garth of nine O two to O fame and she had her dog with her on a little live panel with Hoda and she was a great interview and a fascinating subject and not at all what I expect from someone who sort of was like hand p from small town America and became a huge star, has been through a lot and learned a lot from what she's been through, and just was a really really cool person. And then my final name drop moment was when I met Questlove. I had a plan because we both listened to the Lonely Island of Seth Meyers podcast and he's actually been on it as a judge for like which of their sketches go on the quote unquote Criterion collection and without laboring and telling all the inside jokes of the pod. Basically, if you see one of the hosts of the pod, you're supposed to say quad Army and they're supposed to say back to righteous Kill. So I met quest I introduced myself and then I said quad Army and he was like, oh yeah, yeah, totally Quaid and I was like, no, You're supposed to say righteous Kill. He's like, oh yeah, I screwed it up. And then we ended up talking for forty minutes about a million other things that it was great, and he even showed me his detailed list of every episode of Saturday Night Live that he watched and tracked every musical moment of the RPMs the key so that he could make that beautiful music special that he made. If you guys, I haven't seen the fiftieth anniversary music special that Questlove made, where he takes the musical performances and mashes them like a DJ would, but using visuals, So all of a sudden, it's like Handsome Umbop gets interrupted by the Cranberrys and they're singing at the same time, but the way a DJ would mash up two songs. It is one of the most incredible things I've ever seen. I sent it to at least fifty people when it came out, So talking to him about the making of it and how he had to pitch Lauren on it and then make it and then get the rights for everything, and then seeing his notes of sitting down and watching every episode of the entire fifty years of the show to track all the music and then get it in his head the way a genius does, where he's connecting all the different keys and bridges, and that's just that's really cool. It was like the coolest conversation ever. But then like two hours later at game night, he goes by the way, I texted Seth and the Lonely Island guys that I failed them and that this awesome like sportscaster Sarah Spain had quite armed me and I'd failed to righteous kill back, and they were all really excited that you listened to the pod and Andy Samberg at first didn't know where you are, but then he came back, He's like, wait, I know who. That is so cool and so like for me, like who spends every episode wishing I was best friends with all of them For them to know I exist and then know that I kuwait Army right just killed them was very cool.
00:46:17
Speaker 2: I'm so happy for you.
00:46:18
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, so I've already gone on too long name dropping and telling you all the fun stuff, and I even forgot to mention that on the last night iHeart rented one hundred foot catamaran and everyone went on this insane boat ride through can and it was so cool to see how much the iHeart people all just wanted to hang out with each other outside of work and got along and just bonded. And the boat was beautiful. And as we pulled into the harbor, Jada Kiss was performing on a neighboring boat, and I zoomed in and saw my friend Ben Lyons talking to Anthony Ramos, and I was like messaging him these paparazzi photos of him from boat to boat in France, and I was like, I couldn't be any cooler right now. And then I walked over and tried to get on that boat and was summarily denied, and I realized I wasn't that cool. As I was waiting trying to text with multiple people on the boat that I knew that were like, oh my god, I'm so sorry. I don't have any poll with the door. Like, I'm excited I got on, but I don't know anyone who's running the party, so I can't get you in. Fat Joe walked by me and then they were like, and here's why, Cleff. So it was like Jada, Kiss, Flavor, flav Y, Clef, all these people on this boat and they were just going crazy to all New York songs. There was a big Nix Nice Vive on the boat. Anyway, that was like how things ended was me getting rejected from the final party, which was a good way to end, you know, just really bring down the ego that I had amassed over the course of the week by when told Andy Sandberg knows who I am by just rejecting me from a very cool boat. Okay, so my three takeaways. Number one is getting the room. You know, I kind of described can as a boondoggle and Sport Beaches just a way for people to get paid from their company to go to France and party, which it very much is. But also the number of meetings that came up because I met someone, the number of conversations that I had with people that I otherwise wouldn't have met or been able to talk to about iHeart women's sports and women's sports in general, and our show and everything else was massive and post COVID with zoom, you kind of forget how much more gets done when you're actually like face to face with people and having a conversation. And then you know, especially a friend of mine, Justine, said she had like a full half hour conversation with someone and got really vulnerable about some stuff that had gone on with her and that the end found out that the person was a global CEO for a massive brand and was like, let me help you, and like she wouldn't have necessarily done that first ball in a zoom, but secondarily, if she like had known who the person was, they were just having a human conversation that ended up resulting in some vulnerable conversation topics and her being able to open up and be helped by someone who has a lot of pull. So get in the room, go to the place, go to the conference, talk to the people, introduce yourself all the stuff. It's still like so necessary. Number two, what I alluded to earlier, Make sure that you're going to spaces that aren't as familiar with women's sports and having conversations about women's sports and the athletes and the leagues and the team, because it's amazing how you can go to a sports conference and people are like, oh, professional women's hockey, that would be so cool, and you're like, it's happening already, and it is cool, right. There's just a lot of the same touch points that you hear over and over the people know, which is great Serena Williams and Caitlin Clark and the US women's soccer team, but getting out into those spaces and really expanding people's knowledge and a lot of them would be interested and want to dive in more. They just need to be told that the space exists and the opportunities are there, so really remembering to start base level and build from there.
00:49:30
Speaker 2: I feel like that's something that we even talk about sometimes, Like you would think that as a women's sports podcast we would know all the things about women's sports, except that it's a really huge space. And so I tell people all the time when I meet them, I'm like, send us pitches, let us know if something cool is happening, because you just are not aware of how big the world is. And how much is going on out there. Yeah, we need a dumbed down version for Alex about some of the celeb names you just drop because my I'm so sorry. Yeah, i'll give you a f I'm gonna trust that they're a great.
00:49:57
Speaker 1: PowerPoint presentation later and then finally, and I don't want this to sound corny, because maybe it can't be corny. I did work with the stylists, and I did show up feeling good in the spaces in which I was and with the people I interacted with, And usually my attempts to be low maintenance are genuine. I am a low maintenance person. I like to be pretty chill and comfortable. And I also don't ever want to see myself or have others see me as better than them or different from them. Right. I don't like the idea of talent quote unquote being separate from everyone else in a way that feels like a distance. And I actually feel very uncomfortable when I get sent like car service, or people try to open doors or like do things for me. It makes me feel bad, even though I know that sometimes giving up responsibilities or asking for help is necessary when you get really busy. I don't know why, but I have this internalized like dislike for that side of this job. And what I found is I I can still be very grounded and kind and low maintenance while also putting in enough effort to be seen as the successful decision making person that I want people to see me as in this space. And so the panel I did with Noah about look good, feel good, play good became something that I recognized over this week that had I not put that effort in before to show up looking and feeling confident, I would have been a different person in those meetings and parties because I would have been so worried about how I didn't show up looking like I fit in, instead of feeling confident enough to be moving around the space like I belonged.
00:51:34
Speaker 2: With your great eyebrows, with.
00:51:37
Speaker 1: My great eyebrows. But like, I know that it's a privilege to be able to afford a stylist, or to be able to afford buying those clothes, but I think it's also just an intention that you can set without the money side of things, which is to say, I allow myself to feel powerful and like a boss and to walk into spaces and carry myself in a way that deserves respect as opposed to trying so hard to be easy, reasy, low maintenance cool that you don't project the kind of respect that you hope that people will give you, you know. So to end on that seemingly superficial but actually very powerful and meaningful note for me, can was freaking awesome. Thank you so much to iHeart for valuing our show and me and sending me And hopefully a lot of really awesome stuff will be coming down the pipe because of all the connections that I made in people that I met. And also it's supposed to be a massive heat wave in Chicago, so the sweating will continue until morale improves. We have to take another break when we come back. Signs of the Times welcome back slices. As we are closing out this final week of season two of the show, I have to remind you yet again to tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell your neighbors and your parents to listen to the show, tell everyone you know about it, and please subscribe, rate and review. I tell you every but it's so easy. Watch Balhalla rating one out of one very Special Place review. Since the Golden State Valkyries very first game, the atmosphere in the building has been one of one. The team set out to have a home court advantage unlike any other in the league, and the city showed up and made it so, with valkx merch on practically every single body in the arena, every seat filled, and an inclusive and joyful atmosphere, one that immediately earned it coverage as a queer hot spot in a city already full of great LGBTQ spaces. You might remember we even shouted out a story very early in the val season, one about the Valqueries and other queer supporters groups. Well, it's the very last day of Pride Month and Balhalla has been even more pop in than usual this month, as evidenced by the signs that fans have brought to games this June. A recent instapost from the team showed a few of the best signs, one that reads we retired from the clubs now we party at Balhalla, another that reads trans people belong in ballha GSV made me gayer, and one featuring Rue Paul. The Chase Center is just full of pride every single game, so much so that when the Valks bested the Dream over the weekend on Pride night Star Gabby Williams said right into the camera on live TV for the gays, and I bet we're going to see that rallying cry on some future signs by next Valkyrie's home game. Now it's your turn, y'all rate and review. Thanks for listening, See you tomorrow. Good game, Marina Maybury, Good game, my stylist, Hugh literally the hottest day in French history while I'm trying to look cute. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network, our producers are Alex Asi and Bianca Hillier. Our executive producers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder. Our editors are Emily Rudder, Lucy Jones, Brittany Martinez and Gianna Palmer. Production assistants from Avery Loftus and I'm your host Sarah Spain