Women Face Short Careers Options Few In Basketball, Even For Stars, After College

Jessica Gaspar has been a basketball star since grade school. She was too good for girls her age, so she would play with older boys in town leagues.

At summer camps, she was among the best. Her father took her to practices of the Dartmouth High School boys team he coached where she’d go one-on-one with his players.

As a senior at that school, she became one of the nation’s top players. She’s in all-star games in Virginia this weekend and Pennsylvania next weekend. She’s on a team that will play in Paris in May.

And in the fall, she could be the starting point guard at North Carolina, the 1994 NCAA women’s champion.

“She loves the game,” says her father, Steve Gaspar.

But four years from now, she may be out of it.

Unlike the men, no multimillion-dollar pro contracts await women after their college careers. They can play for pay in Europe, coach in the United States or leave basketball behind.

“I think a lot of girls are disappointed, but we can’t do anything about it,” Jessica Gaspar says. She adds that she’s not bitter about the limited opportunities. “I’m looking forward to getting an education.”

Tonya Cardoza has taken the journey Gaspar is about to start.

She starred at Boston English High School, made the NCAA Final Four all-tournament team in 1991 with runner-up Virginia and spent a few homesick months playing pro ball in Spain.

Now she’s in her first year as an assistant at Connecticut. At 27, an age when top NBA players reach their peaks and add to their fortunes, she is a restricted-earnings coach. But the job has its thrills.

Smiling broadly, she climbed a ladder and helped cut down the net after the Huskies won the East Regional to advance to the Final Four. Then they completed their unbeaten season by beating Tennessee in the title game.

It was the last game of Connecticut star Rebecca Lobo’s college career.

“She’s at the top right now,” Cardoza says. “Now everyone knows her and wants to see her continue to play basketball and they’re not going to have that opportunity.

“This is the last game they’ll see her play unless she makes the Olympic team.”

While the popularity of women’s basketball has grown - the NCAA title game’s TV ratings doubled from last season - the players have no significant outlet to keep using their talents.

“It’s sad that there is nothing for them to go on to,” says Mark Robidoux, Gaspar’s coach at the high school 50 miles south of Boston. “You play four years at college, then you’re done.”

Gaspar is still excited about those years. She figures 25 to 50 colleges contacted her, but North Carolina was the clear winner, especially after she visited the campus in November.

“When I stepped on that campus, it was just the feeling that I want to come here. It’s the feeling that I belong here and I fit in here. I felt comfortable with the surroundings,” she says.

Cardoza felt the same on her recruiting trip.

“I knew once I visited Virginia, that’s where I wanted to go,” she says.

Women’s basketball is big at North Carolina, which lost in this year’s round of 16. But its popularity at Connecticut was overwhelming this season.

Home games were sold out. Cars pulled over and people held banners as the bus carrying the champions from the Hartford airport passed. After it reached campus, a rally drew 6,000 fans, Cardoza says.

“People were crying and everything,” she says. “It was so great. We were almost bawling on the bus.”

Women’s basketball has its rewards. Gaspar is getting a full scholarship to North Carolina. She thinks she might like to play in Europe after that. And, although it’s a long way off, she wants to try out for the Summer Olympics in the year 2000.

There was plenty of satisfaction during her high school career. She got to play in Boston Garden, where Dartmouth lost in the Division 1 state semifinals to finish at 23-2 this season.

She averaged 27.5 points per game as a senior and scored 45 in a postseason tournament game. She’s also an outstanding defender.

“She can do things with two basketballs most people can’t do with one,” Robidoux says.

Now she’ll take her skills to North Carolina, just as Cardoza did when she went to Virginia.

Cardoza says that when her college career ended, “it wasn’t really tough because I knew I probably could have the opportunity to go overseas, but the fact that I couldn’t play in my country was a bummer.”

Although women’s basketball has grown in popularity, Gaspar faces the same limited future in the game she plays so well.

But her father points out that she gets to enjoy basketball for another four years. And college provides benefits beyond the sport his daughter loves.

“The ultimate goal is to get a good education, and North Carolina is a great school,” he says. “That’s the way she’s looking at it. Whatever happens, happens. All she wants out of it is a good education.”