WNBA. Saying that alone is enough to elicit laughs in most high school classrooms. “Women’s sports” is another guarantee for laughter.

Why is this? The negative connotation surrounding female athletics is a strange one. To an outsider, I guess it makes sense. I’ll admit I’ve made my fair share of WNBA jokes. Until this year my interest in women’s athletics was nonexistent.

Why watch the women when you could watch the men? That’s what I always used to think.

Then I started covering the Coyote women this year. Watching them this season completely changed my perspective. They drew solid crowds and watching them dominate the Summit League regular season was fantastic. When I told people our women headlined some Saturday men and women’s double headers, they were shocked. People couldn’t believe USD would put their women over their men.

When I would ask students around campus if they were going to the game, the common response was no. Maybe they just didn’t get it. Maybe this Coyote team was just special.

As the regular season came to an end, I found myself in Sioux Falls. Over the course of spring break I drove more than 500 miles. Not to South Padre Island, not to Mexico, but back and forth from my home in Sioux City to Sioux Falls for the Summit League Tournament. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Watching USD play their way to the final was wonderful to watch. Seeing them lose in front of a packed Premier Center to State was heartbreaking.

When the season started I wanted to see this team win the Summit League simply because I thought it would be cool to go to the NCAA Tournament. By the end, I wanted them to make it because I’d seen how hard they worked, I’d seen them go 15-1 in conference play and I saw them leave it all out on the floor against SDSU.

The fact that this team missed the big dance was wrong — something that’s already been discussed at length in better words than I could put it.

Watching them play through the WNIT was a great experience. The show they put on against Oregon was one of the best team basketball performances I’ve ever seen, men or women.

Seeing 7,415 people packed in the Dome for the WNIT final was awe-inspiring. The win and the game seemed to wrap up the whole campus. Yet still there were detractors.

“It’s only the WNIT,” or, “Who cares? It’s women’s basketball.”

That seems to be the root of the problem. No matter how high a women’s team flies, whether it’s this year’s UConn team, Baylor with Brittney Griner or even Serena Williams in tennis, they’re still torn down because they’re women.

The gender divide in sports has always been deep. They’re recognized less, paid less, yet are subject to just as much if not more scrutiny then men. With Becky Hammon being named an assistant coach for the Spurs and the U.S. women’s soccer team winning the World Cup, women’s athletics are making inroads in this country.

After watching this year’s USD team, my eyes have been opened. These women can play, and I can’t wait to watch them again next year.

So no matter how you may feel about women’s athletics, at least give them respect. They have done more than enough to earn it.