It took 47 years, but now I finally can say it: I talked to a woman about hair. More shocking: I actually listened when she talked back. What’s next: A conversation about where to shop for spring shoes?

Nicole Washburn, the delightful young lady who plays first base for the hottest team in town, the Kansas University softball Big 12 champions, was on a roll standing outside the team bus moments before it took off to the airport for a flight to Phoenix, on the way to Salt Lake City, where they’ll catch a bus to Provo to play in the NCAA tournament.

“I love doing hair,” Washburn said. “I love to cut hair, dye hair, do extensions.”

And: “In high school I started dying my friends’ hair.”

And: “When the sun makes my hair lighter, I dye it dark to get my color back … I put some blond in Serena’s (Settlemier) hair.”

So what in the world does this have to do with KU’s softball team?

Everything. The life of a student-athlete is supposed to be about more than packing every day full of sweating and studying, sweating and studying, sweating and studying.

There should be room for good times and creating memories that won’t ever die. This team has succeeded in achieving that, thanks in part to Washburn and outfielder Betsy Wilson.

It all started with assistant coach Jen Sewell’s abhorrence of the color pink. The players made Sewell promise that if they won a couple of games as a No. 6 seed at the Big 12 tourney she would get a hot pink cast on her injured leg. They did and she did, bound by the contract written up by Washburn.

Next they turned their attention to the head coach, Tracy Bunge, she of the short blond hairdo. What, a player wondered aloud, should they contractually bind the head coach to do if the team earned the automatic bid?

“Hair extensions!” Wilson blurted out.

Washburn wrote out another contract and Bunge signed it. This afternoon, Washburn will perform the procedure that she said will give Bunge blond hair that reaches all the way down her lower back. And for as long as the Jayhawks survive in the NCAA Tournament that gets underway with their Thursday game against Brigham Young, Bunge will have hair that stretches all the way down to her lower back.

How will she look with longer hair?

“I think she’ll look hot,” said Wilson, blessed with a supermodel-quality smile and long blond hair without the aid of extensions.

Said Washburn of Bunge: “She’s going to look awesome. She’ll have a long ponytail and she’s never had a ponytail. I’m so excited.”

Settlemier, the Big 12 Player of the Year, reserved judgment.

“I don’t know what she’s going to look like,” she said. “It could be a mullet or she could be a blond bombshell. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Washburn, who also enjoys giving manicures and pedicures, vows she will not disappoint.

“I’ll probably do it after practice because it’s going to take at least two hours,” she said. “With her hair being so short, I want to make sure to make the extensions start higher on her head so that it doesn’t look like a mullet.”

By the way, if anybody knows of any good sales coming up …