FAIRFIELD — About 2,000 fans attended the UConn women’s basketball team’s open practice Sunday at the Pitt Center, packing the gym to see the Huskies mix legitimate work with playful interaction.
It was much like the scene at the old Field House back in, say, 1985, I assume. How many people attended those games? I asked someone who was there for all of them.
“Two thousand — for the season,” said coach Geno Auriemma, entering his 42nd season as the Huskies coach. “No, maybe even not. Probably not.”
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Attendance back then was measured in the dozens. Twelve national titles and 25 Final Fours later, the Huskies regularly play in front of 10,000 fans at Gampel Pavilion, 15,000 at PeoplesBank Arena, 20,000-plus in the NCAA Tournament and millions more on TV.
There was a time, though, when Auriemma’s voice would echo through a virtually empty gym. Could it have been imagined, back during the Reagan Administration, that UConn women’s basketball would become what UConn women’s basketball is?
“Oh, [heck] no,” said Kathy Auriemma, Geno’s wife. She attended Sunday’s practice and walked with her husband to the area of the gym where he met the media afterward. As Geno talked scheduling and Sarah Strong and shooting and expectations, all things pertinent to the upcoming season, Kathy, when asked, reminisced a little.
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“His first coaching job [in college] was at the University of Virginia as an assistant,” she said. “He comes and interviews for the job here and I’m back in Charlottesville, and he comes back and says, ‘The people were great, but the facilities have to be crap because they never showed them to me.’ I said, ‘Well, the people matter more than the structure.’ And he made the right decision. It felt right. I knew this job mattered to him because it just felt right. And that’s a good way to start, because you’re enthusiastic. No wonder he’s here for all this time.”
UConn started winning and kept winning, of course. Gampel Pavilion opened in 1990. The first national title came in 1995. All-Americans and Olympians and top WNBA draft picks throughout most rosters over the years, today honored with banners on the walls at the Werth Champions Center.
UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemmma and wife, Kathy Auriemma, celebrate UConn men’s basketball team winning NCAA Men’s Final Four semifinals basketball game Saturday, April 1, 2023, at NRG Stadium in Houston. Uconn Huskies defeated Miammi Hurricanes 72-59.
Yi-Chin Lee/Staff photographer
The Huskies, by now, have long been a traveling circus, drawing thousands to road gyms where, even in this era, some programs play in front of crowds as small as those back in Storrs when Nintendo was brand new, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were about to make NBA space for a kid named Michael Jordan and Cold War tension still permeated.
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UConn took the show to the campus of Sacred Heart on Sunday. Tickets were $40 apiece. Merchandise was sold. Do the math. Certainly it was a healthy day for the program and the athletic department. What do you do with something you’re proud of? Show it off. Sell it. Both.
Fans were lined up as early as 10:15 a.m. for an event that began at 2 p.m. UConn arrived around 1:15 and soon took the court to individual introductions. Program legend Nykesha Sales, back with the Huskies as an assistant coach, was the answer to one pre-practice trivia game and she stood and waved to the crowd when the big screens in the arena pointed out that she once scored a record 46 points in a game. Players made their way through the crowd. T-Shirts were tossed. Some light drills and a scrimmage were mixed into what was probably the team’s easiest workday of the year. Everyone in attendance ate it up.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s hard to believe,” Auriemma said of drawing such a crowd. “I actually said we would probably get a bunch of people to come if somebody said there’s a chance a UConn player is going to walk through here sometime this afternoon. I’m just always incredibly impressed by the turnout, whenever we do something like this, regardless of where we do it. I think our kids enjoy it. Certainly I think the fans get a kick out of it. All in all, it’s a good thing.”
It’s unique, this attention.
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Members of UConn women’s basketball celebrate during an open practice at Sacred Heart on Sept. 20, 2026. The Huskies played games with fans, held a 3-point contest and scrimmaged during the practice.
Photo courtesy of UConn Athletics
Decades have passed since those Field House days, when Auriemma went about turning a struggling Big East program into a regional, then national, player.
“I actually thoroughly enjoyed those years, believe it or not,” Auriemma said. “We were coaching for fun. Yeah, we wanted to win and it meant a lot. But the kids were playing for fun, we were coaching for fun, and everything was brand new. Everything was a chance to do something that had not been done in the program. It was fun. It was rewarding. Now we’re trying to do things that have been done for the last 30 years, and it’s not as much fun.”
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Auriemma laughed a little as he said this. There’s still fun to be had, of course. But with success comes pressure, and with this new era of college sports comes a sense of professional responsibility. Nothing’s as innocent anymore. It’s business. Players are paid. Auriemma makes one hundred times more money than he did in the early years.
The schedule is loaded — front-loaded this year — with matchups against top national programs, all of it arranged for TV as much as stiff competition. Even exhibition games are money-makers now — Oct. 12 against Syracuse in Uncasville, Oct. 19 against Texas in Hartford — because they can be and they have to be. Every program and every athletic department in America feels the pressure to generate additional revenue today more so than ever.
UConn is a basketball brand unsurpassed by any other. But part of what’s kept Geno here so long, Kathy said, is what brought him here in the first place. It wasn’t a certain building. It was a certain vibe. It was the people.
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“It’s what lifted up his spirits,” she said. “He was just so enthusiastic about wanting to be part of this program, because at the end of the day, people matter. And still, UConn is a good community. They pick people well and they care about each other.”