Ryan Ruocco didn’t realize how big of an opportunity calling WNBA games would be over 10 years ago when the opportunity presented itself. When it did, instantly, he knew there was something there.
“It’s amazing. One of the things I realized very quickly doing it was that it was special,” Ruocco said on the latest episode of Short and to the Point,” And so when I was first asked to do it in 2013 — or I might have been asked, it might have been December of 2012, as I think I said on Awful Announcing, I didn’t understand this was an exciting opportunity, or this was a big deal or something like that — I was already doing NBA games at the time for the Nets and so — it was kind of like, ‘OK, should I do this?'”
Ruocco noticed how good the basketball was, how easy his colleagues Holly Rowe and Rebecca Lobo were to work with, and how accommodating and accessible the players were.
“I fell in love with it early on in that first said,” he said. “And of course when you first start it, it’s not like I went, ‘I’m thinking, ‘Oh yeah I’m going to do this for 12 years — hopefully much longer, I just knew I loved it. You just want to keep doing something you love and I could see there was something great there …”
Ruocco talked about what made WNBA go from a fire to an inferno thanks to Caitlin Clark.
“Getting to witness her completely unique dynamic stardom at the college level and seeing the way it carried over to the pros, she’s a supernova just like we’ve never seen before and I just feel so grateful that I get to help document her career,” Ruocco said. “It comes at this time where women’s basketball was primed for this pop. She’s the star they needed to take it to the top …”
Clark took the basketball scene by storm starting in college after being the national player of the year for the University of Iowa then quickly taking her stardom pro when she became Rookie of the Year after being drafted and landing with the Indiana Fever.
She became an icon. Time’s Athlete of the Year, endorsements, and making even the most casual of fans pay attention to the sport.
The combination of the basketball and the kindness of the athletes impressed Ruocco.
“This is a special community to be a part of,” he said. “There is a connectivity and togetherness I think for all of us that cover women’s basketball, and then everybody that coaches it and plays it that is different than other sports.”
