Inside 1 of the U.S.’ 1st 2 women’s sports pubs for Iowa-South Carolina mega hoops event
It was a signature moment in women’s sports. And this in Seattle was the signature place to be.
That was obvious by the the line to get in.
The queue stretched far past the hostess stand of the Rough & Tumble pub, which with The Sports Bra in Portland are the first two bars in the country devoted to women’s sports. Still 45 minutes before tipoff Sunday morning, the line of people waiting to watch unbeaten South Carolina play the incomparable Caitlin Clark and Iowa in the NCAA women’s basketball national championship game stretched down the wooden stairs. It went out the front doors. It went around the sidewalk. It snaked down 22nd Avenue Northwest, all the way down the hill to Shilshole.
“I got here at 8:30,” a 20-something man said after he got seated under one of the cavernous, wood-dominated Rough & Tumble’s 18 flat-screen televisions. “I was the first one in line.
“They wouldn’t let us in until 10.”
The game began just after noon.
They came to watch Clark, the national women’s player of the year and all-time leading scorer in Division-I women’s AND men’s college basketball, against the machine that is South Carolina women’s hoops.
Friday night, Clark scored 21 points as Iowa beat Connecticut in the Final Four to get to Sunday. Clark’s national women’s semifinal was the most-watched basketball game in the history of ESPN: 14.2 million viewers. It was more than had ever watched an NBA game, a men’s college basketball game, heck, any hoops on the sports giant’s network.
In fact, Iowa-UConn women attracted more viewers than any World Series or NBA Finals game last year. The TV audience was more than for all but one ESPN college football game in 2023.
Sunday’s title game with the captivating Clark trying to end South Carolina’s perfect season, the nation’s first- and second-ranked women’s college teams, promised to have even more people watching on ABC.
The women’s game has become so engrossing, so enthralling and entertaining this March into April, it’s eclipsed the uber-popular men’s NCAA tournament for the first time.
Viewership for the men’s Final Four national semifinal games, North Carolina State-Purdue and Connecticut-Alabama Saturday night, weren’t available Sunday night. Entering the Final Four this past weekend, the men’s NCAA tournament was averaging 9.07 million TV viewers — or more than 5 million fewer than watched the Iowa-UConn women’s game Friday night.
This year, the real March Madness has been from the women.
They have been more entertaining. More fundamentally sound. More compelling.
Just... better.
Put it this way: They won’t be lining up outside sports bars in Western Washington to watch UConn and Purdue play for the men’s college championship Monday night.
“We thought we’d have more (Saturday, for the men’s Final Four). We were ready for it,” the way, way busy hostess at the Rough & Tumble stopped to tell The News Tribune Sunday.
“They don’t care about that.”
She laughed.
Caitlin Clark thrills
The Rough & Tumble was probably 80% women, 20% men Sunday morning into afternoon. There were two bathrooms: unisex, and women’s.
The place was predominantly for Iowa. A handful of patrons wore T-shirts with “Hawkeyes” and Clark’s number 22 on them.
Most were roaring as Clark stunned South Carolina early with 18 points in the first quarter. It was an NCAA record for a title game.
“Who are you rooting for?” a former women’s basketball and rugby player standing next to her male companion asked the TNT
“I’m jumping on the Caitlin Clark Bandwagon,” she said.
This month, it seems the whole sporting country was with her.
As Clark went off early, the hostess cheerily walked through the pub with a click counter in her hand. She was counting each of the people inside the packed place. That included the folks on a covered side patio overlooking 22nd Avenue. A guy out there there was sitting on the floor. He craned his neck to see the patio’s overhead TV.
All were munching on brunch, drinking mimosas, beers and soda — and absolutely enthralled with the action on the screens.
The Mariners were playing at Milwaukee on local cable ROOT Sports at the same time. Not that you would have known that inside the Rough & Tumble.
Zero of its 18 TVs had the M’s game on, or anything on. Except the Iowa and South Carolina women.
The seating capacity in the pub is 165. The hostess counted past that. The News Tribune stood in the back of the main room, and ate standing up.
The hostess called cell-phone numbers off a wait list. She was offering a limited number of standing-room-only spots.
In the first quarter she finally maxed out at the 13 staffers and 170-plus patrons. She turned away dozens who had been waiting about an hour to get in.
“Fire code,” she said.
Rough & Tumble’s beginnings
Rough & Tumble opened in December 2022. It was the idea of Jen Barnes. The former corporate executive and start-up leader was dismayed in 2021 when she she couldn’t any sports bar in Seattle that was showing the OL Reign in a televised league semifinal game.
That was on a fall Sunday afternoon, an NFL Sunday. There was a Seahawks game going on at the same time. In the sports-bar scene, say no more.
But not anymore.
Miffed, and an advocate for gender equity, Barnes opened Rough & Tumble. She did it months after The Sports Bra, a cozy place about one-fourth the size also featuring televised women’s sports, opened in Portland.
“As like-minded individuals and fans of women’s sports, we are hoping to build a diverse community of trust, value, mutual respect and belonging,” Barnes said in a news release when her spot opened 16 months ago. “Rough & Tumble was conceived because I simply wanted to watch women’s sports on a big screen, with sound, and not in my living room.”
Sunday, it was happening.
And it was a happening.
It was the third time since Rough & Tumble opened the hostess could remember needing to use a clicker to count patrons to comply with the fire code.
The other times: for the OL Reign, Seattle’s women’s professional soccer team, playing for the National Women’s Soccer League championship on a Saturday night last November; and for the FIFA women’s World Cup played in Australia and New Zealand last summer. Some of those World Cup games, including the final, began at 3 a.m., Seattle time.
“We were open for the women’s World Cup in the middle of the night, and it was packed,” the hostess said.
“PACKED!”
South Carolina prevails
The wall above the open-faced kitchen has framed jerseys of local women’s sports icons: University of Washington all-time softball hits leader Sis Bates; former UW soccer coach Lesle Gallimore, now the Reign’s general manager; legendary U.S. soccer goalkeeper Brianna Scurry; U.S. national soccer player Sam Hiatt; a sweater from the nonprofit Seattle Women’s Hockey Club; and, of course, a signed jersey from Megan Rapinoe, the former Reign and U.S. national team star.
But it was all about women’s basketball Sunday.
As the game went on, Clark’s shooting turned cold. That quieted much of the Rough & Tumble’s crowd. South Carolina’s size inside began to dominate the game. With Clark cold, Iowa’s attempts to score in the lane got rejected by the taller Gamecocks, time and again.
When South Carolina’s sophomore guard Raven Johnson, who had a hand in Clark’s face all game, stole the ball from Clark at midcourt and drove to a layup in the final seconds of the first half, the Rough & Tumble crowd gasped. South Carolina took a three-point lead into halftime.
By the fourth quarter, South Carolina had rallied from a double-digit deficit early into a double-digit lead. Clark made just 5 of 21 shots after her wowing first quarter. She finished with 30 points, but on just 10-for-28 shooting.
And that was that.
In the end, the South Carolina fans in the Rough & Tumble yelled most. Their Gamecocks capped a 38-0 season with a national championship in a thoroughly entertaining, 87-75 win.
When Clark exited the game in the final minute, South Carolina’s perfect season, championship and win in this seminal women’s sports event assured, this entire pub for women’s sports broke out in applause.
It was apt appreciation for a season and career that, for this April and on this memorable Sunday, elevated women’s college basketball above the men’s game.
From the back of the packed place, a female — what else in the Rough & Tumble? — voice rose above the cheers.
The shout was clear.
“We love you, Caitlin!”
This story was originally published April 8, 2024 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Inside 1 of the U.S.’ 1st 2 women’s sports pubs for Iowa-South Carolina mega hoops event."
