When will the crowd’s roar be deafening for female athletes?

The excitement is everywhere lately.

Today’s the parade for our hometown Stanley Cup winners, the Chicago Blackhawks.

Twitter is all a-buzz with World Cup madness (the site is even acting up due to overcapacity issues some speculate is being caused by the multitude of tweets about the event.)

Sports talk radio rambles on and on (and on) about baseball.

All of this kind of depresses me.

What about women’s sports? When will people ever get excited about a female sports team or a whole league for that matter? Sometimes, if a women’s Olympic team excels (remember soccer’s Mia Hamm?) and does well, then some excitement catches on, or if an individual performs well (like Lindsey Vonn, this year’s medal-winning Olympic skiier) then people take notice. But women’s professional leagues (such as the WNBA) have struggled to gain followers. In fact, have we ever had mass hysteria for a women’s team? Not that I can remember. (But if you do, please leave a comment!)

Growing up, the big team here in Chicago was the 1985 Super Bowl Champion Chicago Bears. They’re still talked about frequently. So much personality. Spirit. Talent. At the time I was 11 and—because of them and the frenzy they created—aspired to be a professional football player (no joke). I figured I could kick. I dressed up as quarterback Jim McMahon for halloween. The only football team I ever could really join back then was my high schools “Powderpuff” team (great name, eh?) and I did, but it was disbanded before we ever took a snap because the school district deemed it “too dangerous” for us girls and a big insurance liability.

But then, I had a teacher. Her name was Dorothy Ortman and she taught 4th grade at Winston Churchill Elementary. She was stern, tough, feared even. One day she came in with a scrapbook. She was a pitcher for the Racine Belles in the women’s baseball league in the 1940’s, the one they made into the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.” I remember thinking, “Wow. Women were professional baseball players! And lots of people came to watch them!” But then the war ended. Men came home and played again and the league was scrapped. Besides, with men here, who really wanted to watch women play? Just a wartime novelty, right? But I thought what Mrs. Ortman had done was cool. And to present it to our class, I think she did too.

Girls today have many wonderful role models to choose from—and not just female athletes. The ground-breakers are everywhere: business, politics, science. But is it wrong for me to feel some jealousy toward men’s sports teams? Why can’t we get some hype? Some men have even gone so far as to say women athletes will never get as much attention because many of them aren’t attractive enough. Danica Patrick gets the endorsements and the publicity because she is “hot.”

The NCAA Women’s College World Series is underway. Have you heard it in the news lately? Maybe not. Is Twitter buzzing from its results? No. There’s so much talent in this tournament, but once it’s over for the seniors—where will they go? Probably either to get regular jobs like the rest of us or to coach, which is great, but without a professional league like the men, their sports careers might end.

So hooray Hawks! Go Brazil or whomever you root for in the Cup! It’s fun to follow a team and cheer them onto victory. I know. When it comes to certain sports, I can become kind of a fanatic. And perhaps I’m as guilty as everyone else. In writing this, I realized that most of the athletes I usually root for have first names like Pat and Chris, but they don’t sport ponytails.