Belinda Mills Wright pulled a silver dollar-sized glass pendant shaped like a souvenir pressed penny out of her pocket. It glittered as flecks of grey and sparkly red caught the harsh arena light. The value of this particular pendant, though absent alloy, exceeds any conjurable coin.
Because those grey flecks are her wife Diane Casteel’s ashes. She died Sept. 25, 2023, at age 61. Wright — a 45-year season ticket holder with Louisville women’s basketball — didn’t know if she could attend games without Casteel in the seat next to her.
Thanks to friend Melanie Uhl at Zimmerman Art Glass in Indiana, Casteel is always close by.
“Come on, honey,” Wright said, holding Casteel in her right hand, “let’s go to the ACC Tournament.”
Wright graduated Corydon Central High School in 1980 and attended a Louisville basketball camp, where she met the great Darryl Griffith, that same year. She got UofL season tickets in 1981. Wright met Casteel, who lived in Chicago at the time, 22 years later and made her a basketball fan by osmosis.
Wright’s eyes lit up behind her red-rimmed glasses as she recounted how Casteel’s daughter Jenny introduced them after pinging Wright on AOL instant messenger: “I’m looking for someone for my mom.”
Wright was skeptical at first. “What kind of pervert,” she said with a laugh. Casteel was skeptical, too. How would they make long distance (about a 4½-hour drive) work?
They didn’t have to for long. Casteel would move down, and they would start a beautiful life together. One where they never fought (even if Wright’s son Josh thought it’d be fun to see a disagreement spur an argument). One where they never let a day go by without saying, “I love you.”
Wright and Casteel’s first date was a George Strait concert at Freedom Hall on Feb. 28, 2003 — which they recognized as their anniversary. Casteel loved gardening and taking fishing trips with Wright off the coast in Florida. She scattered part of Casteel’s ashes in Cape Canaveral on a sunny day two Novembers ago. Wright caught four fish that outing.
Another portion of Casteel’s ashes are in a glass jar with a printout of her heartbeat hanging from Wright’s rearview window. The cork stopper falls out on occasion. But the whole bottle — cork still embedded — came down on Wright’s drive to the KFC Yum! Center on Saturday for UofL’s 2026 NCAA Tournament debut.
“Diane started — I just say it’s Diane — Diane started moving,” Wright said. “She wanted to make sure she came to the game.”
Casteel loved attending games with Wright and their friends. Any and all things UofL and Indiana — from IU to pro leagues. Wright is the member of her sports-obsessed friend group with year-round seats to Fever (since the team’s inaugural WNBA season in 2000) and Colts contests.
That group is about six silver-haired women strong (not including Casteel) — Wright, Uhl, Patty Hoffman, Juliann Moody, Nanette Conrad and Jane Casey. They used to travel to the Women’s Final Four every year, a tradition started in 2009 — Louisville’s first appearance in the national semifinals, where it lost in the NCAA championship game to UConn — after Wright won $5,000 in a last-man-standing game at her old firm, Semonin Realtors, to finance their trip. She’s been to every Final Four in program history and then some. In Tampa 11 years ago, Wright ran into St. Xavier alum Tom Cruise (yeah, as in “Top Gun” Tom Cruise, known as Tom Mapother during his Derby City days) and took a selfie with him.
(As Wright remembers it, Cruise had to take the picture himself. She had the camera facing the court. “I’m shaking,” she told him as he grabbed her phone.)
After the COVID-19 pandemic, Wright and her friend’s decided to attend the ACC Women’s Tournament every year instead, knowing for certain Louisville would be there.
They’re in on the Cards’ current NCAA Tournament run until the music cuts off and they’re no longer dancing. If Louisville defeats Alabama Monday at home, Wright will be in Fort Worth for the Regional round. Then, basketball gods willing, she’ll see her team in Phoenix for the Final Four.
With Casteel right there in her pocket.
Reach college sports enterprise reporter Payton Titus at ptitus@gannett.com and follow her on X @petitus25. Subscribe to her “Full-court Press” newsletter here for a behind-the-scenes look at how college sports’ biggest stories are impacting Louisville and Kentucky athletics.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville women’s basketball March Madness, meet longtime Cards’ fan
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