Jewel Clark wishes everyone could experience the magic of March Madness. The former Pennsylvania guard (2000-04) and Philadelphia Big 5 Hall of Famer did so twice, and the memories feel fresh 20 years later.
She can still feel her ears ringing from her first NCAA tournament experience. As a freshman, she helped secure the program's first appearance in the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship, earning a No. 15 seed and a trip to Texas Tech. Clark laughs at it now, but she remembers realizing for the first time the reason players use hand signals during the game to call plays: They can't hear one another.
"It was so loud. I was loving it because I had never played in front of that many people," said Clark, who ranked second on the Pennsylvania all-time scoring list when she graduated. "I couldn't hear anything."
The 2003-04 Ivy League Player of the Year, Clark helped bring the Quakers back to the NCAA tournament as a senior. This time, she faced a women's basketball goliath in UConn, led by the legend Diana Taurasi.
"It was really cool, just to see how UConn played. It was like a well-oiled machine," Clark said. "I was in admiration, while at the same time saying to myself, 'You are here to win. You can't stand around and watch too much.'"
Both games ended in losses for Clark but also fond lifelong memories. As March Madness games begin this week, her nostalgia will fire up like always.
"Just going to an NCAA first round, being there versus watching on TV, it's just two different worlds. Everybody can't experience that, but I wish people could," she said. "Coming out of the tunnel and a crowd erupts, even if it's not for you, they just erupt. It's something that I think you have to experience to understand."
Those memories are also snapshots into the way basketball changed Clark's life.
The trip to Lubbock, Texas, marked the first time she'd ever flown on an airplane. Basketball also led to her first passport, which she needed to play professionally in Greece for a couple of years after finishing her collegiate career.
"Sports are the connection to something outside of the immediate space," Clark said. "It can put you on a different journey or path that you didn't know was possible for you."
In so many ways, Clark's life is a perfect example of this, including in her current career as a teacher in the Baltimore area.
Clark never wanted to be a teacher — quite the opposite. She got into it as a short-term substitute in what she described as a "hold me over" situation following the end of her basketball career. That turned into a long-term substitute gig. Then, a full-time role she'd do for just a year, which became "three more years" in her head. Now, she's more than 15 years into it and in love with the opportunity to shape young lives.
"What I've discovered is that I really like to be around young people," she said. "You can help give guidance and direction. The same guidance and direction I received, I try to impart on young people so that they can understand there's more to life than what's just around them. That's what I strive to do, to open their minds up to other possibilities."
That includes to the power of sports.
A physical education teacher, one of Clark's classes specifically comprises the school's top junior and senior student-athletes. As part of the class, she helps them prepare to pursue college sports opportunities at all levels. Naturally, she shares all the ways college sports positively impacted her life.
"That's life changing, the roommates that I had, the classmates and my teammates," Clark said. "The connections are so important. Even if you don't go to a large-name school, just being away and connecting with people from an independent space, it helps you to create more of your foundation."
For her, college sports continued to create meaningful connections well after her time at Pennsylvania ended.
In 2022, she was part of the Legends of Ivy League Basketball class that also included current NCAA President Charlie Baker, then the governor of Massachusetts, who was being honored as a former Harvard basketball player. At a dinner for the Ivy League honorees, Clark — who taught English before transitioning to P.E. — said she connected with Baker over their shared love for books.
This year, the two reconnected, and Baker visited Clark's class of student-athletes, who were assigned a research project on the NCAA and Baker before being surprised with his appearance.
Without sports, she reiterated to her students, none of this would have been possible.
"It's good to be involved … because you never know who you'll meet. You never know who's going to remember you," she said. "For some people, they hear about these success stories, but they don't have a real connection with someone who did it. If sports connects you to something that changes your everyday understanding, I think that it opens doors, whether the students see it right now or not. You can plant a seed and hope it grows sooner than later, but I try to focus on planting seeds."
