Baylor gave up a double-digit lead but hung on in the final minutes to win the NCAA women’s title game against defending champs Notre Dame by a single point Sunday night in Tampa, Fla.

With the 82-81 victory, the Lady Bears clinched their third NCAA women’s basketball championship — joining UConn and Tennessee as the only Division I programs with three or more titles. The last time Baylor clinched the title was in 2012 against the Fighting Irish.

Baylor kept a comfortable lead for the first half, before Notre Dame closed the gap to tie the game in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter.

With 3.9 seconds left, point guard Chloe Jackson drove past Notre Dame’s defense to put Baylor ahead at 82-80. Then Notre Dame called a timeout and inbounded to tournament standout Arike Ogunbowale. The Irish had a chance to turn the game around when Ogunbowale was fouled going for a layup. But, lucky for the Lady Bears, Ogunbowale missed her first free throw in the remaining 1.9 seconds, leaving Baylor to hold on to the 1-point lead.

Baylor managed the final stretch without star forward Lauren Cox, who injured her knee in the third quarter. Cox, who hobbled to the sidelines on crutches to celebrate with her teammates after the final buzzer, told ESPN that she’s unsure about the severity of her injury.

Cox, who contributed 8 points and 8 rebounds to Baylor’s 62-50 lead before getting rolled off the court in a wheelchair, has remained a crucial player throughout Baylor’s 37-1 season. Her early exit in the final raised the stakes for her teammates.

“We had to do it for LC,” Chloe Jackson, referring to Cox, told reporters after the game. “She got us here. We had to finish the job for her.”

The win brought Baylor coach Kim Mulkey to tears. “I’m emotional for a lot of reasons, but mostly for Lauren Cox, and I’m so happy,” Mulkey said. “These are tears of joy, but they’re also tears of thinking about injuries.”

The NCAA reports its highest attendance in 15 years at the Women’s Final Four and regional playoffs. That record fanfare was evidenced by the more than 20,000 fans that filled Tampa’s Amalie Arena for the final game, as reporter Bradley George of member station WUSF reports.

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Muffet McGraw, the two-time championship-winning head coach of women’s basketball at the University of Notre Dame, was dancing a jig and celebrating Friday night after leading her team to victory over the University of Connecticut.

The NCAA women’s basketball championship game is now set for Sunday — setting up a possible third win for McGraw — with the reigning national champion Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish taking on No. 1 seed the Lady Bears of Baylor University.

But this past Thursday, McGraw’s mood was more serious when answering a question about her recently reported commitment to never hire another male coach for her staff.

She began talking about the decades that the Equal Rights Amendment has gone without ratification: “We need 38 states to agree that discrimination on the basis of sex is unconstitutional. We’ve had a record number of women running for office and winning. And still, we have 23 percent of the House and 25 percent of the Senate.”

McGraw was responding to a question about being the “voice” of female coaches in college athletics after University of Tennessee coach Pat Summitt, who won 1,098 games with the Lady Volunteers for more than 38 years, died in 2016.

McGraw’s two-minute response, touching on the long history of sexism in many American institutions, went viral.

“I’m getting tired of the novelty of … the first female governor of this state. The first female African-American mayor of this city,” she said. “When is it going to become the norm instead of the exception? How are these young women looking up and seeing someone that looks like them, preparing them for the future? We don’t have enough female role models. We don’t have enough visible women leaders. We don’t have enough women in power.”

She said girls are socialized to think “men run the world.” Where better to counter that narrative than in sports, she asked.

“When you look at men’s basketball and 99 percent of the jobs go to men, why shouldn’t 100 or 99 percent of the jobs in women’s basketball go to women? Maybe it’s because we only have 10 percent women athletic directors in Division I. People hire people who look like them. And that’s the problem.”

In 1972, Title IX enacted gender equity policies in student athletics as part of a law. Two years later, more than 90 percent of women’s teams in college sports had female coaches, according to the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota.

That number has fallen drastically. The center’s newest report based on data from last year found the percentage of female head coaches had increased slightly from previous years, but only to 41.8 percent. The group took data from 86 institutions that were part of the NCAA Division I “big time” conferences.

In basketball specifically, the percent of women coaching women was 59.3 in 2018.

Notre Dame player Jessica Shepard responded to McGraw, “Talk that talk then coach.” Notre Dame forward Brianna Turner, who scored her 2,000th career point Friday, just wrote on Twitter: “Take notes.”

Samantha Brunelle, a high-profile incoming recruit to Notre Dame, tweeted the video of McGraw’s answer, saying it was “one of the many reasons why Notre Dame was the place for me.”

“I aspire to be like her one day,” Brunelle told the South Bend Tribune of South Bend, Ind. “She stands for women so much. She has a huge voice to help give us women more of a platform.”

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Flo Filion Meiler is a world-class athlete who lives in Shelburne, Vt. At the indoor World Masters Athletics Championships in Poland last week, Meiler, who is 84, racked up medal after medal in her age division.

Golds in high jump, pentathlon, 60-meter hurdles, and pole vault. Silvers in long jump and triple jump. Oh, and another gold in the 4×200 relay. “The four of us ladies in our 80s set a new world record,” she told NPR this week.

But wait — the pole vault?

Indeed. Meiler took up track and field at age 60, and as she watched the pole vaulting competition at the Senior Olympics, she had a notion.

“They weren’t pole vaulting very high,” she remembers. “And I said to myself, you know, I think that I could do better than that.

So at a sprightly 65, she took up the event. “I love challenges, and the pole vault is a challenge. You have to have a really strong upper body, upper core and very strong arms.”

No problem for Meiler, who was competitive slalom water-skier for 30 years. “I think that’s why I’ve done so well in it, is because of the way I’ve always handled my body.”

At last week’s world championships, she was the only pole vaulter in her age division, though there were a few men in the 80-84 field. Meiler notes that she was far from the oldest athlete taking part in the meet. “There was a lady from India who was 103. … She didn’t run very fast, but she did it!”

All that winning takes a lot of training, and Meiler keeps a rigorous schedule. She says no longer has time to ski, as she devotes herself five to six days a week to her workouts.

“On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I will do track events. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I will do machine weights. Then I will play doubles tennis, but that’s just social tennis.”

She mostly trains alone, but she has a coach at the University of Vermont to help her get competition-ready. “I have her help me, let’s say, with my shot put. And I have her help me doing the high jump and so forth.”

A year ago, she started having hamstring problems and knew it was due to getting older. So she doubled the time she devotes to stretching and warming up. “It makes a world of difference in not being injured,” she says.

The competition may be thinning, but Meiler doesn’t see retirement anytime soon.

“You know, if the good Lord gives me my health, I’m going to keep going forever.”

Right now she’s focused on the upcoming Senior Olympics in Albuquerque, N.M., and she’s eagerly anticipating her birthday in June – an occasion that will shift her into the next age bracket.

“I’m looking forward to being 85,” Meiler says, “because then I’ll be at the bottom of the ladder, and I’m going to look at all these records and see what I can do about ’em.”

NPR’s Sarah Handel and Art Silverman produced the audio version of this story.

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Baseball is back. Thursday is opening day for the major leagues. All 30 teams are in action. And while the cry of “play ball!” sounds throughout the majors, baseball officials hope the game embraces a companion cry of “hurry up!”

Since 2014, the average time of a nine-inning game has hovered at or above three hours, which may be driving away the younger demographic baseball is trying to appeal to.

When Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred made a recent spring training swing through Arizona, he acknowledged pace of play is one of the trends of the game that the league watches carefully.

“We’re thinking we can make small changes in what is still the greatest game in the world,” Manfred told reporters, “in order to make our entertainment product more competitive.”

Baseball unveiled one of those changes during spring training.

It didn’t last long.

Watching the clock on a beautiful day

Earlier this month, it was a classic spring training day in Scottsdale, Ariz. Fans at the San Francisco Giants home park, Scottsdale Stadium, lounged under a hot sun at a game between the Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

There’s a lot of lounging during spring training. Families sat on blankets on a grassy slope out past the center field wall. Standing nearby, longtime Giants fan Ryan Koven sipped a Pacifico beer and gazed toward home plate.

“You’re supposed to forget time at a baseball game,” Koven said, taking in the scene. “You’re supposed to relax and forget time.”

Which is why Koven, 34, was agitated. That doesn’t happen often at spring training. He watched as a large clock, near home plate, ticked down from 20 seconds every time the pitcher got the ball from the catcher.

“It’s very distracting; I’m looking at it right now,” Koven said, adding, “I’m looking at the pitcher and I see it ticking down, 10 … 9 … 8 … this is a very unbaseball experience right now!”

On this day, it was early in the pitch clock experiment. The clock has been used in the minor leagues for a few years to make pitchers and batters work faster. But not in the majors. And there was grumbling in Arizona, from the stands to major league clubhouses.

“I think this is a big game changer,” said Chicago Cubs pitcher Kyle Ryan, standing in front of his locker. “[Baseball] is America’s sport. [It] kind of stinks seeing it change. But, it is what it is.”

Actually, it isn’t anymore.

The baseball players union shared Ryan’s distaste for the pitch clock. MLB ended the spring training experiment in mid-March, agreeing not to implement it through the 2021 season.

Baseball still wants to hurry up

But baseball officials still are committed to the idea behind the clock — speeding up the game, and specifically, eliminating dead time. They want crisp play for all fans, but especially device-toting young ones who, the reasoning goes, want action and want it now!

Back at Scottsdale Stadium, Giants fan Koven questioned that stereotype.

“I think young people can appreciate tradition,” he said, “and they can get into things that have a history. I think you can sell an old game with a history better than you can speed up an old game, or change an old game to fit new people’s tastes.”

“I don’t think that’s a hard sell for young people. I think they may be going at it the wrong way.”

Koven’s friend, 32-year-old Aman Grewal, agreed.

“I still think I’m young,” Grewal said, “and I enjoyed the game the way it was without a pitch clock, for instance.”

Grewal said if baseball wants to appeal more to younger fans, do like the NBA: Make videos and clips of action more available. And, he said, baseball is too buttoned up and needs to let the players have fun.

“When a player does a bat flip and people freak out,” Grewal said, “traditionalists freak out. You know, it’s 2019. They’re pro athletes. Let them entertain.”

Entertain faster

In nearly Mesa, Ariz., lifelong Chicago Cubs fan Bob Weinberg watched a game at the Cubs’ Sloan Park. He has a different, and perhaps surprising take on speedy baseball. Weinberg is 61, a time of life when you really shouldn’t care how long a baseball game takes.

But Weinberg does.

“I love coming out here. I love being outdoors,” said Weinberg. “I’m retired now and living the dream, as they say. But I also understand why people who are younger, without the attention span, don’t want to sit and watch all the downtime in an MLB game.”

Weinberg said constant pitching changes are a major culprit in slowing down baseball.

“I was at a game last year in Milwaukee,” he said. “Brewers and somebody. It was an 8-2 game in the eighth inning and they brought in three pitchers to face three batters. And when you see that, it’s not about the competition or the entertainment. … I’m not sure what it’s about.

“I’ve never, ever walked into a ballpark, and I’ve been to thousands of games, never heard a little kid say to his dad, ‘Gee, Daddy, I hope we see eight pitching changes today!” Weinberg added, sarcastically: “That’s always so exciting to see, that manager walk out of the dugout and wave his arm to the bullpen — that’s my favorite part of the game!”

Weinberg is glad officials are tweaking the rules, even though the pitch clock has gone away. This season, the number of pitcher’s mound visits he jokes about will be reduced. Also, breaks between innings will be shortened.

A little too fast?

Weinberg, who wants the game sped up, and Grewal and Hoven in Scottsdale, who don’t, defy generational stereotypes. But some fit.

Sixty-four-year-old Ned Yost is a baseball lifer. Since 2010 he has been the Kansas City Royals’ manager. At a spring training media event, he answered a few questions about pace of play. Finally, he got fed up.

“I don’t know, man. You want to speed it up?” he asked. “Make it a seven-inning game. That’ll speed it up.”

That may be a little too much, too fast. But such is the debate, as baseball strolls, a little more briskly, into 2019.

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Last October, Esteban Serrano wrenched his knee badly during his weekly soccer game with friends.

Serrano, a software engineer, grew up playing soccer in Quito, Ecuador, and he has kept up the sport since moving to the United States two decades ago.

He hobbled off the field and iced his knee. But the pain was so severe that he made an appointment with Rothman Orthopaedic Institute, a network of orthopedists practicing in Greater Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York.

The doctor diagnosed a strain of the medial collateral ligament and prescribed over-the-counter pain medication as well as a hinged knee brace, which Serrano used for several weeks until he’d healed.

He expected his insurance to cover his treatment. A plan from a previous job had covered him when he needed surgery to fix a broken nose sustained in another soccer game in 2017.

Then the bill came.

Patient: Esteban Serrano, 41, a software engineer and father of two from Phoenixville, Pa., outside Philadelphia.

Total bill: $1,197. $210 for the office outpatient visit, $105 for an X-ray and $882 for a hinged knee brace, all billed by the orthopedic practice. His insurer, Aetna, negotiated only $52.59 off the cost of the brace. That left Serrano with a balance of $829.41 because he hadn’t met his $3,000 deductible for the year.

Service provider: Rothman Orthopaedic Institute in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Medical service: A doctor examined Serrano’s knee and sent him for an X-ray. The doctor said he should use a knee brace for four weeks and recommended a hinged one sold through the practice.

What gives: A medial collateral ligament injury is a common knee injury occurring frequently among participants in contact sports. According to the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, the medial collateral ligament is involved in at least 42 percent of knee ligament injuries. Although most cases are sports related, such injuries can also result from everyday activities like tripping on stairs.

“The doctor told me that he thought I didn’t have damage, that it was more of an inflammation, but he ordered an MRI just to make sure,” said Serrano. (The MRI, performed at a later date, confirmed that suspicion.)

Serrano said the brace did ease the discomfort and stabilized his knee as it healed. However, the bill was almost more painful — he owed the orthopedic practice $829.41.

“You can find the same brace for less than $250 online,” he said.

The bill came close to Christmas, when Serrano’s 12-year-old daughter wanted her first iPhone. “I told her, ‘Sorry, honey, but I already paid a price of an iPhone for the hinged knee brace,’ ” Serrano joked.

Serrano emphasized that he felt lucky to have the money to handle a bill that for many people could equal a month’s rent or three months of groceries.

Knee braces fall into a category of products called “durable medical equipment,” whose prices can vary widely. Items range from slings and braces to wheelchairs and commodes. They also include glucose meters and breast pumps for new mothers.

Doctors and hospitals that dispense such equipment for patients to take home almost always bill for them and add hefty markups that can catch patients unaware.

Braces and other products “are often marked up two or three times what the cost is, and unfortunately, that is the standard practice,” said Dr. Matthew Matava, an orthopedic surgeon and chief of sports medicine for Washington University Physicians in St. Louis.

Rothman Orthopaedic didn’t respond to requests for comments.

The type of hinged knee brace Serrano bought was a DonJoy Playmaker. DonJoy is one of the nation’s largest producers of braces. A customer service representative for the company said it charges a retail price of $242.51 for the model that Serrano got. Serrano paid more than three times that price.

In an emailed statement about the case, an Aetna spokesman wrote that “while the cost of a knee brace, or any other health care service, is determined by the negotiated rate between the health care provider and the health plan, the starting point is the charge from the health care provider.”

It is not even clear that such an elaborate knee brace was needed for Serrano’s injury.

Dr. Elizabeth Matzkin, chief of women’s sports medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said that while it is helpful to give patients some kind of knee brace for support after medial collateral ligament injuries, the use of a hinged knee brace does not influence recovery, according to studies. She called hinged braces “luxury products.” Simpler, cheaper braces also offer support.

Resolution: Serrano recalled that when he received the brace, an employee showed him a form with its estimated cost in writing. He remembered his share was more than $700, but he didn’t pay too much attention because he assumed his insurance would cover it.

After receiving the bill, he made several phone calls to the doctor’s practice to get a copy of the form he’d signed. It stated that the product could be returned within seven days. A month had already passed. Because he had not met his deductible, his $829.41 balance was even more than the estimate.

The takeaway: These days, many types of equipment dispensed by doctors’ offices or hospitals involve a charge. Don’t assume generosity. Ask the doctor to identify precisely what you need and explain why you need it.

When a doctor or hospital offers you a piece of equipment to help your healing, decide if you really need it or will use it. Say no if you won’t. Ask if you will be billed for it and how much.

Many items can be purchased at a fraction of the cost online or from a pharmacy just down the block.

Know your insurance plan’s copay or coinsurance for medical equipment (often 20 percent). The cost of purchasing the equipment yourself online may well be less than if you purchase through a medical office.

NPR produced and edited the interview with Kaiser Health News’ Elisabeth Rosenthal for broadcast.

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that isn’t affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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