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From first-timers to longtime believers, Iowa women’s basketball draws wide range of fans in Cleveland
Wisconsin mother on watching Caitlin Clark with daughter: ‘I want her to see it and remember it’
CLEVELAND — The 3:30 a.m. wake-up call. The 4 a.m. start of the drive. The seven hours in the car. The vehicle running out of gas on the Ohio turnpike. The $600 tickets.
All of it.
“It’s worth it,” Allison Hanselman said without hesitation.
The mother from Mequon, Wis., even called it a “no-brainer.”
“It’s history,” Hanselman said, standing outside Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse with her 11-year-old daughter Kaylee. “I want her to see it and remember it.”
The Hanselman family’s mother-daughter trip was one part of a vast patchwork of fans — from newly-minted Iowa fans to those who have been invested in the program for decades — who made the (in many cases, expensive) pilgrimage to Cleveland to see Caitlin Clark and the Hawkeyes in the Final Four.
Aillson and Kaylee Hanselman became Iowa fans last year — the year when Clark scored 27.8 points per game en route to winning National Player of the Year the first time. They also support UConn’s K.K. Arnold, who is from neighboring Germantown, Wis., but Clark was the main appeal for the last-second adventure.
Kaylee’s favorite part about Caitlin Clark? “Shooting threes,” Kaylee said as she wore her Caitlin Clark jersey, which was an Easter gift, and a homemade Iowa bracelet.
On the other side of the Iowa fandom spectrum, Becca McCann was among the former players who witnessed Iowa advance to its second straight national championship game Friday. McCann was on Lisa Bluder’s first four teams at Iowa.
“To see this for the coaching staff that I got to play for and watch them star in all they’ve done over the years — I couldn’t be happier,” McCann said. “There’s not a staff out there that has worked harder for this.”
McCann was there with her husband Robert Gallery, the former Iowa football great. Their children, who are unsurprisingly big Iowa women’s basketball fans as well, were not so fortunate.
“They’re not happy with us, that’s for sure,” McCann said. “But we got to take them back to the Ohio State game at Carver this year just last month, so they got to see that.”
Carol Rowland, a 58-year-old from Murfreesboro, Tenn., made the trip up with five other family members of varying generations. She had some holy help on Friday as she rooted for the Hawkeyes.
“I’m working for two different groups of religious sisters — Dominicans and Daughters of Charity — and they’re all praying for a victory,” Rowland said ahead of Friday’s game while waiting to get into an I-Club event.
Rowland initially was thinking about just giving some money to her niece and great niece so they could attend. But her boss, a Notre Dame alum and “big Notre Dame women’s basketball fan,” encouraged Rowland to spend a little more and attend as well.
A younger member of the family pulled the trigger on tickets at just the right time.
“It was like the commercial where it was like, ‘Wait, wait, wait, now!’” Rowland said. “I have no idea how much we spent, but I’m contributing.”
Resale tickets eventually fell from the four-digit figures from earlier in the week, but they still were far from a bargain.
The cheapest ticket on StubHub for Friday and Sunday’s sessions, as of Friday about 90 minutes before tipoff, was $696 each after fees.
Someone just wanting to see Friday night’s semifinals games could have grabbed a single ticket in the 17th row of the upper deck for $337 after fees. Want to bring a friend? You would have had to pay at least $374 each.
Janice Schmitt from Rockford, Ill., and her daughter Emily Jakobsen from Evanston, Ill., benefited from some extra tickets in the family.
"Aunt Mary has two extra tickets,“ Jakobsen remembers Schmitt telling her during last Monday’s Elite Eight game. ”I’m like, ‘Well, we’re going.’ … You feel like it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a Hawkeye fan.“
Schmitt “never actually watched women’s basketball” until the Hawkeyes’ March Madness run last year. Now, she “absolutely” plans to keep watching next year, even after Clark is off to the WNBA.
As for Allison Hanselman and her daughter Kaylee’s eventful 27 hours or so — they decided to leave at 7 p.m. the night before, and she learned 20 miles to empty on her car does not actually mean 20 miles to empty.
“I thought my engine died and then I’m like, ‘Oh, I think I ran low on gas,’” Hanselman said. “I think the gauge was off.”
“A little bit,” her father chimed in.
The native Clevelander’s parents lived only 10 miles away, though, so her father picked her up with plenty of time to spare.
By the time they were venturing around the fan entertainment area outside Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, they were all smiles. After all, they were about to see Caitlin Clark.
“We’re super excited,” Hanselman said.
Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com
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