She Got Name  

Did any basketball player's star soar higher during the NBA lockout than Regina Miller's? The sweet-shooting guard from that famously clever Nike commercial , which aired during the NBA's labor war, rendered defenses defenseless and Spike Lee speechless. Regina is no relation of Lee's longtime on-court nemesis, Indiana Pacers guard Reggie Miller. She isn't even Regina Miller; she's 13-year-old model Kourtney Waterford, a seventh-grader at Elsinore Middle School in Lake Elsinore, Calif. Recently SI's John Walters cornered Kourtney for a quick give-and-take.

Q: Yo, Kourtney, where's your game at?

A: Shut up!

Q: No, really, where do you play your next game?

A: I don't. I'm not playing this year. My modeling career has kept me too busy.

Q: What position do you play in real life?

A: When I played they called me the star forward because I got a lot of rebounds. I was usually the tallest girl on the court. I was usually the only girl on the court.

Q: You played with boys?

A: Yes. I've always played with boys on coed youth league teams that my dad coached. I've never even played against an all-girls team.

Q: Until you donned a Sacred Heart uni in the Nike spot?

A: Yeah. Here's the weird thing about the commercial. I had already worn two uniforms that day. I started out as an extra, and the name on the back of my jersey was Curtis. I don't remember the name on the second one.

Q: Jordan, perhaps?

A: Maybe. Anyway, I guess I was making my shots because the director kept saying, "Keep shooting."

Q: Was he talking to the cameramen?

A: No. I was on fire. Mr. Lee started trash-talking me then. I looked over at him and said, "Sit down! Stick to movies." Wasn't in the script. But I think it got cut.

Q: Any other males talk smack to you?

The Miller ad was a slam dunk Robert Beck

A: Sure. A few boys at school have challenged me to one-on-ones since the commercial ran. I whupped 'em.

Q: Think you'd whup Regina's alter ego, Reggie Miller?

A: Don't know. I've never seen him play. I'm just sick of people thinking I'm his sister.

Q: So you didn't jump for joy when the lockout ended?

A: Uh-uh. When the lockout ended the commercial stopped running. Regina Miller is retired.

Every year scores of buff dudes are cut by NFL teams, leaving them bummed out and convinced their football days are over. Well, Carter Turner has some good news for those guys. He's starting a new professional football league, and he's searching for a few strapping young men—to prance around the field between quarters like ring girls at a prizefight.

Turner is president of the fledgling Women's Professional Football League, an honest-to-god tackle football operation that will begin play this fall. Over the next six months the WPFL will conduct five tryouts, and from the applicant pool, two 30-women teams, both based in Minneapolis, will be stocked. The squads—nicknamed the Minx and the Vixens—will then hit six cities (St. Paul; Chicago; Green Bay; Fargo, N.Dak.; New York City; Minneapolis; and Miami) for a seven-game season. "The time has come,'' says the 45-year-old Turner. "Women are playing everything else, so why not football?"

This is not the first experiment in women's pro football; in the last 20 years three other leagues have briefly gotten off the ground before flaming out. However, Turner believes his league is destined for a better fate than its predecessors', thanks to the game's growing popularity among women and an eccentric marketing plan. After each kickoff, a dog will run onto the field and retrieve the tee. After each quarter, Turner says, a "good-looking, well-built bodybuilder" will come onto the field bearing a placard with the number of the quarter on it. Then there are the teams' nicknames, which Turner thinks are perfect. "If you look up the definition of minx in the dictionary, it says, 'a woman who is provocative and saucy,'" he says. "That's what we are—provocative and saucy."

Maybe, but for the WPFL to survive—and we're not banking on it—it's going to need more than attitude. For one, it will need money. The current proposal to pay players through a profit-sharing plan doesn't exactly ring of lucre. For another, it'll need talented players with a taste for violence. George Halas, a founding father of the NFL, once said of his players, "Speed, size and all that stuff must be considered. But most important, the guy's got to want to hit somebody. If he doesn't like to hit, football's not the place for him." You'll notice that Halas said nothing about sauciness.
-- Mark Bechtel

Shortly after arriving in melbourne for the Australian Open in January, French tennis player Amelie Mauresmo made a point of introducing her country's media to her companion, Sylvie Bourdon, 31. To make such a disclosure on the eve of a Grand Slam tournament, one of four times a year when international attention is focused on tennis, was remarkably brave. The unseeded 19-year-old then proceeded to reach the final, where she was beaten by Martina Hingis. Afterward Mauresmo talked about the freedom of no longer pretending to be someone she wasn't. "I don't want to hide Sylvie," she said. "I love her." Her performance, on and off the court, was inspiring.

The same cannot be said for some of her peers. After Mauresmo beat Lindsay Davenport in the semifinals, Davenport said that playing the 5'9", 142-pound Mauresmo was like "playing a guy." Later, Hingis said, "She's half a man, she's here with her girlfriend." The best-case scenario is that Davenport, who later wrote a note of apology to Mauresmo, simply made a mistake and that Hingis is just a loose cannon. But that doesn't explain why no player came to Mauresmo's defense or why Women's Tennis Association officials did nothing to defuse a controversy that turned Mauresmo into tabloid fodder. Her sponsors, fortunately, have been more enlightened. Nike and Dunlop reaffirmed their support for Mauresmo, who sealed deals with two more companies—one Asian, one French—after Melbourne.

Upon her return to France nearly two weeks after the Open final, Mauresmo said she had no regrets about going public with her relationship. "I would do everything over again," she says, "and do it exactly the same way."
-- Tim Layden
 

 
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