MINNEAPOLIS — Long lines are expected this week outside A Bar of Their Own, where the 12 televisions will be screening March Madness. Only women’s March Madness.
And when the NCAA women’s basketball tournament isn’t monopolizing the airwaves, the bar’s TVs will blast women’s NCAA softball, women’s professional hockey and women’s Olympic qualifiers, among many other sports.
Capturing a boom in women’s sports exemplified by the University of Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, bars showcasing only women’s sports are having a marquee moment, one that’s building into a trend.
“I just knew that, like me, there were lots of women’s sports fans in Minneapolis and in the surrounding area that have tried for years to find women’s sports on TV and not get them,” said Jillian Hiscock, who this month opened A Bar of Their Own, a riff on the title of the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own,” about the first female professional baseball league.
Hiscock, a former college student recruiter, said her “aha moment” came in 2022 when the University of Minnesota’s softball team was in the national tournament and ESPN was airing it but she couldn’t find a bar showing the game.
“I was just so frustrated in that moment that for these athletes that had worked so hard to get to this level of competition that a place 2 miles from their campus wasn’t highlighting them,” Hiscock said.
She said hers is the first bar in the Midwest to focus solely on women’s sports, welcoming customers from budding fans to “girl dads” to professional athletes.
Clair DeGeorge, a player for Minnesota of the Professional Women’s Hockey League; rugby Olympian Kathryn Johnson; five-time WNBA champion Rebekkah Brunson; and Diamond Miller, a forward on the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx, have all stopped by to sign the bar’s Athlete Wall of Fame.
DeGeorge called the women’s sports bar movement a “testament to the hard work of women,” and Miller said, “They’re pushing the boundaries to grow and develop women’s…
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