The Moth Podcast: March Madness
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What is the focus of this women’s basketball podcast episode?
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Sarah Jane Johnson, and on this episode, women's basketball. March Madness has us thinking about threes, dunks, and triple doubles, but March is also Women's History Month, so we're thinking about basketball in a slightly different way.
Who are some iconic figures in women's basketball history?
We're thinking about Title IX, how women athletes are still fighting to get the same respect that men are, and about all the great March Madness moments that women created, from Charlotte Smith's buzzer beater in 1994 to Candace Parker's epic first time dunking in the tournament, to Kaitlyn Clark reigning threes, we want to highlight how incredible sports can be for everyone. So we've got two stories all about hoop dreams and what happens when they come true or don't. Whether you're rooting for South Carolina, UConn, or my alma mater, LSU, go Tigers! We hope you'll enjoy. First up is Toya Chester. Toya told this at a Boston main stage where the theme of the night was on thin ice. A note that this story was told in 2020 and due to our reduced socially distanced audience, things are a little quieter than you might be used to. Here's Toya live at the Moth.
What is Toya Chester's basketball story?
So I grew up in what I thought was a decently sized town in central Massachusetts. I say decently sized because unlike most of the cities around me, we had a high school, we had Searstown Mall, and we had traffic lights. Now, my family was the first family to settle in my town after slavery, so all the black families, most of them, we were related. But the Chesters, I'm a Chester, we were known for something different. We were athletes. And as stereotypical as that sounds, it's true. I myself played softball, soccer, and basketball. I couldn't go anywhere with my grandfather without someone coming up and yelling, hey Chet! Shooting stories about back in the day and asking me, do you know how great he was? Of course I know how great he was.
I heard the story of him running the track meet and then hopping the fence to go and hit a home run in the baseball game before the track meet was even over. I was proud and I knew that I had a legacy to uphold. Basketball was my sport and my grandfather knew that. He bought me a basketball hoop, he set it up at his house. He didn't play with me, it's my grandfather. But he tried to show me a few moves here and there, the hook shot, I never mastered that one. But basketball was everything to me. It was the early 2000s, it was a real culture for me and my friends. Me and my best friend, Taylor, we would ride her bike. Well, she pedaled. I sat on the handlebars. And we would go down to the park, and we would challenge the boys to a little two-on-two pickup.
When we got a little older, you know, we were trying to be cute. We'd wear the jersey dresses. It was an actual dress, but a basketball jersey. It was our life. And, you know, everything, basketball was everything to me. So one time, my mom, she took me to New York City, and we went to the NBA store. I had never seen anything like this. You walk in and they have this display of basketballs with the imprint of the player's hand on it. So you can put your hand on the ball and just see how big Shaquille O'Neal's hand actually is. It looks like a tennis ball in this hand. So then you go through the store, you go in the back, up the stairs, around the corner, and this tiny section is the WNBA. And in my small Massachusetts town, I have never seen this much women's basketball gear in my life. But the thing that stuck out the most was the WNBA basketball. And you know it right when you see it, not just because it's smaller, it is, but it's the orange and white stripes. It's just iconic. I knew I couldn't ask for one of these basketballs.
I mean, my mom, she was one of those moms that would take me to the amusement park. I'd go on the roller coaster, we'd get off, and she'd bring me to the screen, you know, the screen that shows you the picture of when you go down that first hill and she would look at me and she would say, Toya, you better look at that screen real good because you're not going to take one of these pictures home.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the focus of this women’s basketball podcast episode?
0:01–0:18
2
Who are some iconic figures in women's basketball history?
0:18–1:21
3
What is Toya Chester's basketball story?
1:21–5:23
4
What obstacles did Toya Chester face in her basketball career?
5:23–10:02
5
What lesson did Toya Chester learn from her basketball experience?
10:02–20:10