The city’s first women’s sports bar and a bar takeover company fight to strengthen the women’s sports community.
Betsy Sharp grew up on a dairy farm outside of Stoutsville, Ohio, with three older brothers and one younger brother. When the television was on, there were only four channels available, and she rarely, if ever, had control of the remote; it was almost always in the hands of her dad or brothers. It was no different at Sharp’s grandparents’ house, with her grandpa watching either golf, baseball, or one of her most dreaded sports — basketball.
Eventually, Betsy moved off the farm, and in the process of growing up and seeing the world, she met her future wife, Clara.
Clara grew up in Arizona, going to Phoenix Mercury games, and loved basketball. Love found a way to unite the two opposing views, with some ground rules.
“I had this like literally come to Jesus sort of conversation with her pretty early on where I said, ‘You can watch basketball on your time, but I will not be watching it with you,’” said Betsy.
The two celebrated 13 years together at the end of April, and a few weeks earlier, on April 6, Betsy Sharp donned an orange WNBA-themed ensemble for the NCAA women’s basketball championship game between the South Carolina Gamecocks and UConn Huskies. It was a tame outfit selection, despite the league branding that normally stands out in a crowd.
Attend an Ohio State basketball game at any point in the past couple of years, and you may not believe it, but you have seen Betsy Sharp. The former basketball-hating dairy farmer does not blend into the crowd, unless wearing a head-to-toe Grinch costume is the public’s outfit of the day.
Betsy Sharp on Instagram | @Betsysharp
Betsy was wrong about basketball; the evidence is clear on that. The person who hated even the idea of the sport now watches the game with a fervor that is hard to match. From the new Unrivaled professional three-on-three basketball league to paying for YouTube streams of Team USA youth 3×3 games in Mongolia to watch former Buckeye forward Cotie McMahon, the inspiration behind the Grinchy getup.
Another thing about Betsy Sharp is that she is by no means alone in coming around to women’s sports.
Be a generally online person, and it does not take long to see another record broken in viewership, ad space sold, or another arena sold out in either the WNBA or NCAA. The culture surrounding women’s sports is a piece of that growth, and through the Sharps and a Columbus city firefighter, two organizations are bringing excitement and a place to watch to women’s sports fans.
Watch Women Win
Before Clara decided on the Grinch, she had options. They included a full mask to make her head-to-toe like the Who in the mountains of Whoville and another potentially controversial ensemble.
“I never wore a big mask or anything for Grinch,” said Betsy. “First of all, they’re all scary. I did order some, and I was like, ‘This is getting returned.’ I’ve talked about dressing like a referee and showing up with a blindfold, but I also don’t want to get kicked out.”
Instead, the sports fan who came around to basketball added a Grinch mask for the lower half of her face to the full-body outfit. That is because dressing up was not only a way to have fun or honor a favorite basketball player. No, it helped build community.
Betsy and Clara Sharp did not always go to Ohio State women’s basketball games. At first, they had tickets to a few games a year, but in the past three seasons, the frequency increased like their costume budget.
Over time, though, the Sharps became synonymous with Ohio State fans. Along with Clara Sharp, who wore ears and antlers like Grinch’s dog Max, fans recognized them, and relationships formed. For the kids who were not afraid of the Grinch getup, Betsy Sharp gave friendship bracelets.
That sense of community grew into Watch Women Win. It is not a bar, but a bar takeover, as advertised by the group led by the Sharps. It is not a basketball watch party group either. Watch Women Win held events like the National Championship game at Land-Grant Brewing, but also partnered with the Columbus Squirrels women’s rugby team to watch Women’s 6 Nations rugby and have events lined up in Italian Village for the Pro Volleyball Federation championship game and multiple in-person events.
On May 3, Watch Women Win will be out at Whitehall Yearling High School to watch the Columbus Chaos, a women’s full-tackle football team. Clara Sharp worked to get attendees discounted tickets, from the usual $15 to only $5.
For the uninitiated, it is not easy to get a women’s sports event on television at a local bar, and don’t hold your breath for the audio if the bartender at Buffalo Wild Wings gives you one of their 30 screens.
“Yesterday we were literally calling around town just to find a place for us to go watch a game together, like it happens to us every day,” said Clara Sharp. “What I learned is I just wanted to start gathering people in the community, and work with the community, right? Find these community spaces we can work together to build around that, so [we can] bring the community together.”
That community is not exclusive to women either. Watch Women Win wants to build a community for whoever wants to come out to watch a game. Families, single people, and any gender or station in life.
Watch Women Win’s community focus resonated with sports fans through a grassroots marketing campaign that consisted of word of mouth and posts on Facebook and Instagram.
The first event almost didn’t happen when Betsy Sharp went to the hospital.
“My pulmonary embolism was not planned, but Clara’s event had been in the works for, well, years,” said Betsy Sharp. “She has wanted to use her passion for women’s sports for decades and had been planning that event for over a month.”
At this point, anybody would chalk this first event up as cancelled. Add in the fact that there were snowstorms forecast in Columbus that Feb. 16 afternoon, and it made all the sense in the world to focus on the next one. Betsy Sharp’s life was in the balance, but she demanded the event continue.
“Once I was stable and we were talking later that Friday evening, I looked her in the eyes and with tears and sadness and still some fear, I said, ‘PROMISE ME that you will still throw your event Sunday. PROMISE ME,’ and through both of our tears, she did.”
The Sharps celebrated 14 years of their relationship at the end of April, and 10 of those years married. A pulmonary embolism would scare anyone, and the Sharps are no exception, but they have been in rough situations before. Betsy was there for scary moments in Clara’s life, too.
Something to know about Clara Sharp is that her community is always on her mind. For years, Betsy heard her wife talk about how much she cared for those around her, but when someone in that community threatened gun violence against Clara, her work came to a complete standstill.
Now afraid to interact with strangers, the Sharps went through therapy, and Betsy kept hearing Clara talk about what resonated with her the most. When the therapist asked what makes her tick, what she wants to do with her life, and other questions to help find herself again, Clara always went back to building up people around her and raising up women’s sports for all.
“You literally have no idea how many times I’ve heard that over the years,” Betsy said. “It’s not as much a passion even anymore as it is a way of life.”
“She was also very upset that she couldn’t be at the first one, but she was like, ‘You have to do it no matter what,’” Clara added. “So I did.”
Despite everything in Clara’s way, Watch Women Win met up for their first event, the regular season edition of South Carolina and the UConn Huskies, on a snowy Sunday. During a Level ` snow emergency, 16 of the 30 people who bought a ticket to the event showed up.
Their next event was for Unrivaled, the new 3-on-3 professional women’s winter basketball league, and Watch Women Win sold out. Ohio State assistant coach and former All-American Katie Smith was on hand for the event, did a question-and-answer session, and stayed longer than the Sharps ever hoped.
Clara Sharp
The basketball events and special guests continued for Watch Women Win. Both the Final Four and Championship Game events sold out.
When the UConn Huskies won their first national title since 2016, former Ohio State forward Eboni Walker sat in the crowd and took pictures with fans. Outside hitter Megan Courtney-Lush of the Columbus Fury volleyball team (a Kettering, Ohio native) also made an appearance with her family, spoke with the crowd, and gave autographs.
Watch Women Win events are not only about photo opportunities, but they make it like you are in the crowd at the game. DJ Crys played music, only during the commercials and halftime show, and there was even a t-shirt toss, a favorite for any human with a pulse and a sense of fun.
With McMahon’s transfer from Ohio State to Ole Miss, the Sharps looked for another player to throw all their backing behind. After a failed attempt to get MiLaysia Fulwiley to join Ohio State from South Carolina in the transfer portal (Fulwiley opted for the LSU Tigers), a friend of the Sharps dared Betsy to dress up like a lemon for utility player Skylar Limon of Ohio State softball.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, Betsy is not the kind of person you have to entice with a dare. You just have to ask.
“And sometimes they don’t even have to do that,” Betsy admitted.
Watch Women Win is not alone in its mission to grow the women’s sports community in Central Ohio. There is a bar, not affiliated with the work of the Sharps, that intends to fill a need in the city, and much more.
Raise the Bar
In 2022, the Sports Bra opened in Portland, Oregon. It is a first of its kind sports bar that focuses solely on women’s sports. That is great for women’s sports fans 2,400 miles away, but it does not do much for fans in Ohio. Like many trends, though, it was the first domino to fall, and this one topples in Columbus with Raise the Bar, the city’s first women’s sports bar.
During the National Championship Game, when the Huskies calmly put the Gamecocks to bed, Raise the Bar founder Amy Cooper walked around the new Land Grant Brewing annex and chatted with fellow sports fans. Cooper wore a hoodie with the Raise the Bar logo on the front and “Game On, Sound On” across the back.
It was a lightweight clothing choice compared to the nearly 75 pounds of equipment Cooper wears in her other career as a firefighter with the Columbus Division of Fire.
“We’re really lucky as Columbus city supports us in that we need to have the ability to have things outside of that job, which is really good for mental health,” Cooper said. “It’s also another way to connect with the community because a lot of times we see people on their worst days.”
Cooper grew up in the world of soccer before becoming a “tactical athlete.” That meant playing youth, high school, and club soccer while at Kent State before moving into coaching, including a stint coaching in the Grandview Heights school system.
Like many sports fans, the 1999 United States women’s national team was a crucial influence in Cooper’s life. It opened up her eyes that other people played soccer and enjoyed watching it. Cooper wanted more, but she ran into an experience that is not unique for many who are into women’s sports.
“I call around places like, ‘I want to watch the World Cup, I want to watch the World Cup. No not that World Cup, that’s not this year,’” Cooper said when recalling conversations with local bars when she wanted to gather with the public to watch women’s soccer.
Because of Title IX, Cooper had more opportunities than the generations that preceded her. Also because of Title IX, the current generation of sports fans has had those opportunities to watch women play professional sports. Raise the Bar is the next logical step in the growth of sports.
“It’s at this place now where we have so much access, but we haven’t built the habits of going to the bar watching with the other fans, learning about the other sports,” she said. “But it’s gonna happen and it’s gonna happen at my bar.”
That means multiple screens, all playing women’s sports, and the sound will be up. More than that though, is the attitude of the space. When looking for a location, that is still a secret, it’s not the old adage of “location, location, location.” Foot traffic is great, but this sports bar is following the world of women’s sports, and a lot of the fandom work is done online.
Baseball grew because of radio; football and basketball benefited from television. Women’s sports have built positive communities that began mostly online. Friendships form and then transition to the stadium, and now Raise the Bar is part of that transition.
So, while the location of the bar should still be in a place that people can access, it is also looking at an important benefit like parking, which makes it easier for folks outside of the area. Women’s sports bars across the country have proven in the last three years that the desire is there.
Once the bar is open, there is the atmosphere. Sure, that means having all the marquee sporting events visible, but atmosphere is also the culture formed on the bar stools and at the tables.
There is an all too real experience, for mostly women, when it comes to interaction about men’s sports. There is a fear of asking questions about the game. Aggressive fandom means certain knowledge should be basic, and not knowing something can get you labeled as not a “real fan,” whatever that means.
Raise the Bar will not be one of those places. Take Cooper and Clara Sharp, for instance. Cooper grew up with soccer but was not too engaged with basketball, while Sharp never paid too much attention to soccer until moving to Columbus.
“We all need to be watching this with each other, and then I can say, ‘Oh yeah, that was a foul,’” Cooper said. “Or somebody can say to me, ‘Please explain this.’”
That does not mean there will not be passion screaming at the television during big moments. That is part of what makes sports great. Raise the Bar will have all of that, plus a comfortable environment to learn and throw back a couple of drinks.
It goes beyond the match and game day experience, too. Raise the Bar will be a static location, but the passion and desire for sports will not only spill out of taps but also out into the city of Columbus.
The love for coaching is ingrained in the firefighter. Raise the Bar will use its stance in the women’s sports community to also grow a pipeline of resources for coaches. When there are resources available, it is rarely ever focused on girls’ and women’s sports.
“You’re learning from all men athletic directors it’s all it’s all a boys’ club,” said Cooper. “Which is fine, we’ve navigated those spaces for years, centuries, but it’s to be able to build some sort of resources and training that’s going to help more women become coaches is another issue area.”
Betsy Sharp had another idea, too.
“I would love for you to maybe also be a resource for referees because they need it,” said Sharp. “Maybe we could have some ophthalmologists come in, you know, do a free eye clinic.”
A Vision of the Future
Something that is clear to see is the need for what both Watch Women Win and Raise the Bar have brought to Columbus. While the two are separate, they are working towards common community goals. There is a close to 100 percent chance one of Watch Women Win’s bar takeovers will be at Raise the Bar after its planned opening in the fall of 2025.
After all, it’s the sports community that brought the two groups together. Before Ohio State women’s basketball games, diehard fans run into each other and chat organically. Taylor Brake is one of those fans. Brake runs the Ohio State women’s basketball fan account on Instagram and works professionally with the NIL Store.
Clara Sharp and Brake spoke before a game, and Sharp mentioned how she ran across the Raise the Bar Instagram page. Brake said the owner was at the game that night, a rarity for the soccer-loving Cooper, and before Clara Sharp knew what was happening, Brake was gone to find Cooper.
“So, I’m standing there, she’s meeting me and I have those horns on my head, without the Grinch,” said Clara. “My thought was she must think I’m freaking nuts.”
“I was thinking like maybe they’re like trying to raise money for like rescue animals,” said Cooper.”
“Rescue deer,” said Betsy Sharp.
The Grinch arrived soon after, and a relationship formed that now stretches beyond basketball or soccer.
Sports is about competition, but not behind the scenes of these two community-focused organizations. What adds to the intrigue is that Columbus is not alone. Soon, the W Sports Bar will open its doors in Cleveland, and there are rumors of the Sports Bra franchising out locations, with Cincinnati’s name floated out in the public.
There has not been a better time to be a women’s sports fan than where it’s at today. While new leagues, stars, and sports enter the conversation, fans in Columbus will have those conversations in person at Raise the Bar or a Watch Women Win event.
More than likely, it will be both. Costumes are not required, but encouraged.