There was a time when "girl" and "basketball" were mutually exclusive terms, sometime back in say the Spanish Colonial period. Nowadays however, girls are getting more and more into my favorite game. Oh, pardon me, WOMEN are getting more and more into basketball.

My earliest memory of women's basketball was circa 1987, when a tough young player (she defied the basketball conventions as far as position) named Peachy Cheng was the best woman baller in the country, representing the Philippines in international competition and almost singlehandedly carrying the Ateneo Lady Eagles all the way to the UAAP Finals. My beer-addled memory says they were beaten by a bigger UST Lady Goldies team in what was then a non-televised, one-game Finals encounter. (And yes, my Dear Praxedes, once upon a time the team we now call the Tigers were known as the UST Glowing Goldies.)

Women's basketball has certainly come a long way since then, thanks in no small part to the global appeal of the game itself, a non-gender specific sport made for anyone willing to do battle over 96 feet on blacktop, concrete, acrylic or wood. To my amazement I even caught a small street league in the adjoining court of the Sacred Heart chapel along V Mapa in Sta Mesa Manila one time while I was making my way to a pickup game in Mandaluyong. I couldn't believe it. I thought all the women's games were played exclusively in schools. And here they were, an assortment of uniforms, banging bodies, setting forceful picks, carving away at each other on box-outs and taking stop-jumpers and crossovers. I simply had to pull over, park (not an easy task to those familiar with that area) and take in even a quarter.

It was simply amazing. These were high school girls and they were doing things I thought only boys could do on the hardcourt: posting up, jabstepping, sidestepping, spinning, dropstepping, delivering sweet jumpers and finger rolls. THIS was hardcore!

Not to put too fine a point on it, but these girls were not going to find careers in an increasingly bigger, stronger, faster and multiracial PBA, and there was no counterpart Women's league anywhere. Yet here they were, playing the game the way its supposed to be played, with discipline, teamwork, creativity and joy. Pressure was personal; no one wanted to be posterized or taken to school or given this kind of a facial. That they were playing this well and this hard is a testament to what basketball is REALLY all about.

Wouldn't it be cool if a real women's league were started? Hey, that sounds like an idea...