Those mismatched 3-point arcs from March Madness last year? The Sports Bra made that court its bar

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The nation’s first women’s sports bar is flipping the script on one of the blunders from last year’s NCAA Tournament.

The Sports Bra acquired the court with the mismatched 3-point lines that caused a stir during the women’s tournament games played in Portland, Oregon, in 2024, and installed it as a new bar top.

The way Sports Bra founder Jenny Nguyen sees it, the court brought more attention to the women’s tournament, and that attention highlighted how the women’s side can no longer be an afterthought.

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And that, she says, is ultimately a good thing.

“For us, it’s that memorializing it is actually kind of changing the narrative,” Nguyen said. “It’s like the silver lining of that, and kind of putting it in as a museum piece. And what better place to put it than at the Sports Bra?”

Last year, when Portland hosted Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games, the court had mismatched 3-point lines, with one side about 9 inches short of regulation at its apex.

Five games were played on the court before the lines were redrawn for the regional final between UConn and Southern California. The NCAA said the mistake was the result of human error by the finishing company.

The court issue was just one of a series of problems during the 2024 women’s tournament.

In Spokane, Washington, both the men’s and women’s opening-round games coincided with a youth volleyball tournament, forcing some of the women’s teams to be housed at hotels across the state line in Idaho. The Utah women’s team said that while there, players were subjected to racist abuse by a passerby.

Additionally, a referee was pulled at halftime from an opening-round game in Raleigh, North Carolina, because of a conflict of interest. Another player was pulled from a game to remove a nose piercing.

March Madness has been largely free of controversy this year on the women’s side, which Nguyen sees as a positive in the growth of women’s sports. That’s why she made the old court into a bar top.

“We think it’s the coolest story ever. Some of the other folks might think that it’s the biggest mistake ever and that it just memorializes a mistake and is like a scar on the tournament, and that’s just not the way we see it,” she said.

The Sports Bra, which opened in 2022, was the first in a growing number of women’s sports bars across the country, including Rough & Tumble in Seattle and A Bar of Their Own in Minneapolis. With investment from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, one of the founding owners of Angel City FC of the NWSL, the Sports Bra is looking to expand into additional markets.

Parts of the infamous court may be incorporated in those future locations, too, Nguyen said.

Similar to 2021, when inequity between the men’s and women’s weight rooms at the tournament spurred the NCAA to act — it’s those incremental battles that lead to a better tournament for all the women and their teams. “It’s just a wild ride,” Nguyen said, “but we’re here for it.”

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