The WNBA is opening its 30th season with players saying the league has become easier than ever for young girls to find, follow and dream about. Courtney Vandersloot said the accessibility girls now have to the WNBA is incredible, a sharp change from her own childhood, when the league existed but had to be searched out.
“Even when we were young, the WNBA was still around, but it wasn’t so much available to you. You had to really search it out,” said Vandersloot, a two-time WNBA champion in her 16th season. “So just having something where girls can dream to be, I think, is just really special.”
Elizabeth Williams said that reach is now part of the league’s larger value. The Chicago Sky forward and secretary of the WNBA Players Association said the new collective bargaining agreement does more than shape one league’s labor rules; it offers a model for women’s sports more broadly. “Obviously, we think about ourselves and what matters for us in our league and what’s unique to us, but it does set a precedent for what women’s sports can look like across the board,” she said.
Williams added that the hope is that other leagues can use the WNBA’s deal as a benchmark. She pointed to the NWSL and the PWHL, saying they have “really grow[n] and blossom[ed]” and that she hopes they can look at the WNBA’s CBA “and see where they can make jumps and leaps.” She said the point is also bigger than contracts: “And, hopefully, inspire girls to continue to stay in sport and see what they can do.”
The league’s influence has long reached beyond basketball. It began 25 years after Title IX was passed, and over time it has offered girls role models in all shapes, sizes and colors. The WNBA also remains a safe space for players and fans in the LGBTQ+ community, and its players were among the first to protest police brutality against people of color. The league dedicated its 2020 season to Breonna Taylor after she was shot and killed in her apartment by Louisville police in March 2020.
That activism carried political consequences in 2020, when players helped the Rev. Raphael Warnock defeat Kelly Loeffler in her race for the U.S. Senate after Loeffler criticized the league’s social justice efforts. For the WNBA, the 30th season is not just a milestone on the calendar. It is a reminder that the league has helped change what women’s sports can look like, who gets to see them and who gets to imagine playing in them.
