BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

There's something about 15 basketballs being thumped against a wooden gym floor that sounds exactly like fireworks. The little explosions run into each other, interrupt each other, reverberate. A listener can't help being carried away by the noise and motion of it all.

There's a different kind of excitement when the 15 ball handlers are all girls, ages 8 to 14, and when their audience at the other end of the court is a huge mass of girls, their eyes shining with the joy of being in a gym and the simple anticipation of their turn with the round ball.

Boom. Boom. Bang. They light up the sky.

That's the way we adults felt Tuesday night as we lined the sides of the YWCA gym downtown to watch a girls' basketball skills clinic. It was sponsored by Nike, and arranged by the Y to recruit young girls for a new six-week basketball league.

It was one of those wonderful nights when opportunity stops being an abstract noun. It didn't come knocking, it came bouncing, right into the eager hands of girls of every size and ability.

Girls who held a basketball like an old friend, and girls who could barely get their arms around one. Girls who could toss behind-the-back passes and sink layups, and girls whose eyes lit up when they dribbled.

Some were there as observers, trying to decide whether this sport was for them. Others were certified gym rats already, their hands mimicking the shots three professional women basketball players demonstrated for them, their arms flying like flags every time there was a chance to volunteer.

Call for the ball

On the sidelines, brothers had to sit and watch. It was a strange sensation to watch them watch. Most females' experience has been that, generally, if there are hoops, a ball and groups of boys and girls present, the boys end up with the ball.

But only the adults present - maybe only the women - were pondering such things. Tuesday night, the girls weren't thinking about equal gym time, equal opportunity, or equal anything. They just wanted to get their hands on the ball.

And that was the best part of the evening: the girls' sure expectation. Put us in a gym and we know just what to do. We aren't thinking about how we got here. We aren't thinking that somebody finally let us in. We aren't thinking about the specialness of girls' basketball leagues and skill clinics. We aren't even particularly grateful.

We're just here to play.

Wistful spectators

''I wish I had played basketball when I was in school,'' says Tyree Sherrer, who signed up her 11-year-old daughter Ayesha for the clinic. ''I was just wondering if it's too late for me,'' she adds with a laugh.

In her high school days, ''women weren't really into basketball,'' she says. And you couldn't be a woman courtside at the Y without wondering how different your school days would have been if you had had sports clinics from the age of 8, and professional women athletes to inspire you.

How different your school days, and how different your life.

That's why women are thrilled to see their daughters learn fast breaks and batting stances and backhands.

That's why they fill the stands and stamp and cheer at every point their daughters score.

They are rooting for their daughters, but they are also rooting for themselves.

Some, like Teffany Smith, a mom and coach in the new girls' league, did play basketball as a kid and in high school. ''In my neighborhood, the boys did want us to play,'' she says, then pauses. ''Actually, they wanted to see us fail.

''But if you could play, then they said, 'OK, come on and play with us.'''

At age 8, her daughter Shanys has already joined a basketball league. She likes her jersey. She likes her team name, the Stars. And she's finding out some new things she likes about herself. ''I never knew that I could dribble so well,'' she says with pride and a little awe.

You get the feeling, as you watch her work on her passes, that when she gets older, she won't be waiting for anybody to ask her to play.

Krista Ramsey's column appears in The Enquirer on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati 45202 or fax at 768-8340.

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