University Times

There’s plenty of hoopla when it comes to Pitt’s women’s basketball team this year. Ranked No. 24 in Street & Smith’s pre-season poll, the Panthers launched the season with a 12-game winning streak and prior to yesterday’s match-up with Louisville stood at 14-3 with only 10 games remaining before the Big East tournament.

The hoopsters earned their first-ever ranking in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll and, for the first time in more than a quarter-century, found themselves included in the Associated Press Top 25 earlier in the season.

Adding to the excitement this year, the first and second regional rounds of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament will be at Pitt in March, and the Panthers hope to do more than host.

Behind the team is more hoopla of a different sort — the Women’s Basketball Hoopla, a gathering of women from Pitt’s faculty and staff who join together for networking and fun in support of the team.

Two or three times each season, women from across the University gather at the Petersen Events Center for a buffet and networking before heading to a block of reserved seats where they cheer en masse for the Panthers.

The next Hoopla event is set for 5:30 p.m. Jan. 31 as the Panthers host Notre Dame in a 7 p.m. game at The Pete. Reservations are required for the Pitt women-only reception. (For reservations or information call 4-6623 or email osec@pitt.edu by tomorrow, Jan. 26.) Friends and family members are welcome to join the group to watch the game after the reception. Admission is free with a Pitt or UPMC ID for employees and their families.

Hoopla was initiated last year under the sponsorship of Assistant Chancellor Jean Ferketish and the Provost’s Advisory Committee on Women’s Concerns (PACWC).

In just a year, Hoopla has grown from a handful of women to a group that numbers more than a hundred, not counting the spouses, partners and kids who join them in the stands.

Women’s basketball head coach Agnus Berenato said she was pleased to see so many women at the most recent Hoopla event in December. About 170 women attended the social hour, she said, adding, “It’s so nice to see the fellowship.”

And, once the Pitt women file into the special seating reserved for them at center court, “They cheer their heads off,” Berenato said.

“We have our largest crowds when Hoopla helps out.”

She praised Ferketish’s efforts, tracing them to a request made soon after Berenato arrived on campus four years ago. “She asked how she could help, and I said, ‘You can help me get hips in the seats,’” Berenato recalled. “All I told Jean is ‘Help me get people’ and she ran with it.”

Berenato noted the importance of women supporting women, pointing out that men have a “good old boys” network to help each other get ahead. “We need to rally around our female student athletes,” she said.

“The team notices when there are fans,” Berenato said, adding that she makes a point to tell them about the groups that are supporting them in the stands that night. And the Hoopla women are not just fans, “They’re vocal,” Berenato said, joking, “We’re women, we have big mouths and we’re very passionate.”

Hoopla participant Barbara Juliussen, associate director of career services, said, “It’s like we know the girls,” adding that she enjoys when Berenato joins the group to offer her pre-game insights.

“I am a basketball fan and have so much fun,” Juliussen said, noting that the seats reserved for the group are excellent and the enthusiasm is infectious. “I love cheering with the group and I think it influences the team,” she said.

The chance for women to gather is another aspect of the event.

Unlike Juliussen, Patricia Clark, clinical and corporate contracts officer in the Office of Research, isn’t a huge basketball fan, but enjoys attending Hoopla events nevertheless.

“Just being with another big group of women is the most important thing I get out of it,” she said. “It’s a way to support the team.”

Clark said she enjoys the wide range of faculty and staff who attend and notes that the group has been growing by word-of-mouth as invitations circulate via email.

“Everybody passes it on,” she said, adding that she received her first invitation to participate last year from a colleague in the general counsel’s office, and passed it on to her sister, Barbara Frey, an instructional designer at the Center for Instructional Development and Distance Education.

Frey, in turn, passed the invitation on to other female colleagues at Pitt. “Hoopla is a fun event because it is Pitt women enthusiastically supporting Pitt women,” she said.

Participants agree the Hoopla events serve to help women make connections with colleagues in a casual setting. They are particularly helpful for those whose jobs don’t offer regular opportunities to interact face-to-face with women in other areas of the University.

“That opportunity for social interaction with people you might only see by memo or email is a very good thing,” said Jane Thompson, associate vice chancellor for planning and analysis and a member of the Committee for Women’s Basketball Hoopla and PACWC.

—Kimberly K. Barlow