The WNBA is again, the NWSL season is effectively underway, the NCAA softball event bracket is ready and the battle for the PWHL Walter Cup is on.
Should you’re in search of a option to sustain with all of the motion — apart from USA TODAY SPORTS’ Studio IX —the podcast Billie Jean King takes together with her day by day espresso might be an excellent place to begin.
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That might be “Good Sport with Sarah Spain,” a day by day girls’s sports activities podcast hosted by the two-time Emmy Award winner, who’s former ESPN host.
“Billie Jean King is my pal,” Spain stated in an interview with Studio IX. “Actually each time I see (King and her spouse, Ilana Kloss), they’re like, ‘We’re Slices. We pay attention daily.’”
Spain, 45, lovingly calls her viewers “Slices,” promoting merch with the matra: “I am a Slice.” The identify of her listeners is a type of issues it’s best to tune in to grasp (trace: it’s an ode to the snack of alternative in lots of youth sports activities).
That stated, it’s exhausting to think about Spain getting a much bigger endorsement King’s. The sports activities icon helped go Title IX laws that prohibits gender discrimination in sports activities and schooling — the identical laws that impressed the identify of our girls’s sports activities vertical right here at USA TODAY.
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Along with King, Spain stated she additionally incessantly hears from normal managers and coaches of groups who pay attention. And that’s simply the beginning, as Spain has additionally welcomed company on the present whose titles vary from Olympian to league commissioner.
All of it started in 2024, when the iHeart Ladies’s Sports activities Community launched Good Sport because the first-ever day by day girls’s sports activities podcast from a company media firm. Final yr, Spain introduced she’d been promoted to content material director for the community, serving to form its id because it grows.
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Learns the place these WNBA stars went to highschool beginning with Cheryl Miller, who attended Riverside Polytechnic Excessive College in Riverside, California. She went on to play school basketball on the College of Southern California.
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Learns the place these WNBA stars went to highschool beginning with Cheryl Miller, who attended Riverside Polytechnic Excessive College in Riverside, California. She went on to play school basketball on the College of Southern California.
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Diana Taurasi, Don Antonio Lugo Excessive College (CA)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Sue Fowl, Christ the King Regional Excessive College (NY)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Candace Parker, Naperville Central Excessive College (IL)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Maya Moore, Collins Hill Excessive College (GA)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Tamika Catchings, Duncanville Excessive College (TX)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Caitlin Clark, West Des Moines Dowling Excessive College (IA)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Sylvia Fowles, Gulliver Preparatory College (FL)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Nancy Lieberman, Far Rockaway Excessive College (NY)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Sheryl Swoopes #22, Brownfield Excessive College (TX)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Breanna Stewart, Cicero-North Syracuse Excessive College (NY)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
A’ja Wilson, Heathwood Corridor Episcopal College (SC)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Elena Delle Donne, Ursuline Academy (DE)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Brittney Griner, Nimitz Excessive College (TX)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Daybreak Staley, Murrell Dobbins Excessive College (PA)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Lynette Woodard, Wichita North Excessive College (KS)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Nneka Ogwumike, Cypress Fairbanks Excessive College (TX)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Olympic Legend Ann Meyers Drysdale (R) and daughter Drew / Sonora Excessive College (CA)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Cynthia Cooper, Locke Excessive College (CA)
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Who’s girls’s basketball’s GOAT? 21 gamers to debate
Lusia Harris, Amanda Elzy Excessive College (MS)
With Spain serving to to steer the ship, iHeart girls’s sports activities lately added new exhibits from 2026 WNBA total No. 1 choose Azzi Fudd and longtime sportswriter Jemele Hill.
“With iHeart Ladies’s Sports activities, you may go for a present that is simply softball, simply skateboarding, simply basketball, all these various things. You will discover what you need,” Spain stated. “Now, if anybody ever writes, ‘Oh, I just like the present, however I do not like this half,’ then I am like, ‘OK, go discover one other one. There’s truly lots, now.’”
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No boobs and no holds barred
When requested for a girls’s sports activities scorching take, Spain spat one out at as simple as respiratory. That’s to be anticipated from somebody who notched 127 profession wins on ESPN’s “Across the Horn” earlier than it was canceled in Might 2025.
“I don’t like when feminine mascots have boobs. I perceive that it is alleged to be a feminine. That is sensible. However initially, if it is an animal — a feminine chicken would not have boobs,” Spain stated boldly. “After which it weirds me out for it to have a physique half that feels sexualized in any method. So, I would favor my feminine mascots to to, like, strap it down. Maintain the boobs out of it. And I do know that is not very empowering for ladies, and we should always all the time embrace our our bodies. I simply really feel bizarre when an animal has a rack of lamb.”
By the tip of her take, even Spain was laughing. And that’s the identical power she brings to Good Sport; an idea she stated pitched at ESPN incessantly whereas she was there. Even earlier than then, Spain recalled craving for sports activities protection with “humor and snark,” discovering the tone on blogs misogynist and sexist.
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Now, she’s bringing her imaginative and prescient to girls’s sports activities followers throughout the nation. Talking to her viewers in a tone that’s each entertaining and informative.
“I don’t want girls’s sports activities to be infantilized for the millionth time,” Spain stated. “If you need your children to pay attention, they will pay attention to a different present — or they will hearken to mine, and there is going to be the occasional swear phrase. However like, this has been my life’s work.”
Spain’s dedication to levity in girls’s sports activities protection isn’t with out pointers. Regardless that she desires to channel the power of gossiping about sports activities together with her pals, she is aware of there’s no must amplify baseless hypothesis in a media panorama that’s already left followers struggling to determine truth from fanfiction.
That’s no simple feat for Spain. She makes up a three-man band with producers Alex Azzi and Bianca Hillier, who repeatedly attain out to sources for remark and procure statements to make sure they’re appropriate. Spain takes delight within the journalism she is producing.
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“Should you come to our present; what we’re saying is reported in actual fact. And if I am giving an opinion, you already know it is an opinion,” Spain stated. “And we wish to do it in a method that lots of podcasts aren’t.”