On December 3, Green Bay handily took care of Kansas City, 27-19, on a typically blustery day on the gridiron at Lambeau Field. But the battle between the Packers and the Chiefs paled in comparison to the competing headlines regarding the women on the sidelines: Taylor’s boyfriend versus Simone’s husband, and the fact that none of that felt misogynistic or demeaning pretty much summarizes this past year in sport.
Both Taylor and Simone — no last names needed — pulled off two of the greatest athletic performances of the year: Taylor playing 3-plus hours on the stage several nights a week on her Eras tour, a feat made possible by a brutal pre-tour workout regimen that included belting out her entire set list while running on a treadmill, and Simone flipping her way back into gymnastics, a comeback that included both a national and world all-around title, and yet another element named for her.
To be sure, there were plenty of significant moments in sport that happened in the hands of men — Messi’s Miami debut changed the landscape of professional men’s soccer in the United States in the blink of an eye, coming off the bench to score a stoppage-time free kick winner from 25-yards out, while my beloved Lewiston High School squad won another state championship title just handful of days after a mass shooting brought the tight-knit Maine community to its knees.
But in so many ways, sport in 2023 was about women, and not necessarily in a “she’s the first woman to….” kind of way.
Back in March, women’s college basketball, in only the second time the NCAA used the MARCH MADNESS logo and branding for the women’s side, took center stage with serious star power, becoming water cooler fodder with the semifinal matchup between LSU and South Carolina, and then the final drama between bona fide household names Angel Reese and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark in a game that shattered viewing records. The next day, no one was finding the need to yet again make a case for women’s basketball — or women’s sports. Rather, chatter about sportsmanship and trash talk and the ups and downs of — minimally — inexperienced officiating saturated the Monday morning quarterbacking. Is sexism and inequity in sport fixed? Absolutely not. But perhaps for the first time, we saw an NCAA basketball tournament in which both champions, LSU and UConn, got pretty decent billing.
Indeed, women took up a lot of space in sport in 2023. In August, the World Cup saw Spain’s embattled squad claw its way to the top, defeating England for the crown and paving the way for the entire world to understand what these athletes had been dealing with in their fights against their own federation, battles punctuated by the fallout that followed federation chief Luis Rubiales’s forced embrace of player Jenni Hermoso. After seemingly endless furor over the kiss without consent, which included a FIFA suspension and endless players and coaches around the globe taking a figurative knee in support of Hermoso, Rubiales finally stepped down.
While the U.S. Women’s National team took a rare seat on the world stage, exiting rather early, back at home the NWSL final between OL Reign and NJ/NY Gotham FC was one for the ages, seemingly a scripted storybook ending to an incredible season that put two of the sports’ greats — Megan Rapinoe and Ali Krieger — on the pitch against one another in their last game before retirement. To add to the spectacle, Rapinoe tore her Achilles in the first minutes of action, leaving the field after a long hug from Krieger to watch her team go down 2-1 to Gotham alongside a record-breaking crowd. And there will be a lot more watching in the future, as just two days before the historic final, the league announced a four-year media distribution deal with partners like CBS and ESPN that circled in the neighborhood of $240 million.
But basketball and soccer weren’t the only headline makers in 2023 in women’s sport. In August, Nebraska volleyball claimed (and not without some debate) the largest crowd to bear witness to a women’s sporting event, when 92,003 fans filled Memorial Stadium to see the five-time NCAA championship team beat Omaha 3-0.
Far fewer folks saw Mikaela Shiffrin tear up the slopes to become the winningest alpine skier of all time, 91 career World Cup wins (as of this writing), one of many records that she holds. While fair weather skiing fans might only remember her failure to win a medal in Beijing in 2022, crashing out of three of her six events and coming home empty handed, Shiffrin cemented her status this year as the greatest skier in history (and yes, once more for the people in the back, man or woman), and considering her age, she isn’t done yet.
Neither is Coco Gauff, who is probably my favorite sports moment of 2023. I took my daughter to Coco’s first match at the U.S. Open, and we both decided, then and there, sitting in Arthur Ashe Stadium, that she was going to go all the way, a seemingly foolish prediction at the time considering the fierce competition that permeates women’s tennis right now. Gauff’s incredible athleticism, her uncanny ability to outlast opponents (because, well, see “incredible athleticism”), and the astonishing winning streak that followed her out of an early departure from Wimbledon and led her to her first Grand Slam trophy was my favorite sports story of the year, which — considering this year in sport — is really saying something.
Amy Bass is professor of sport studies and chair of the division of social science and communication at Manhattanville College. Bass is the author of ONE GOAL: A COACH, A TEAM, AND THE GAME THAT BROUGHT A DIVDED TOWN TOGETHER, among other titles. In 2012, she won an Emmy for her work with NBC Olympic Sports on the London Olympic Games.
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