{"id":874163,"date":"2026-08-30T19:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T19:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874163\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T19:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T19:10:10","slug":"wnba-basketball-star-charlisse-leger-walker-signs-with-tauihis-tokomanawa-queens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874163\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA basketball star Charlisse Leger-Walker signs with Tauihi\u2019s Tokomanawa Queens"},"content":{"rendered":"

She went to play college basketball at Washington State, and is currently on a four-year, $2m contract in Connecticut<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leger-Walker scored a career-high 17 points for the Sun last week against the Golden State Valkyries.<\/p>\n

\"CharlisseCharlisse Leger-Walker (left) poses with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert after being selected with the 18th pick in the second round by the Connecticut Sun in the WBNA draft. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old will play for the Queens alongside older sister and fellow Tall Fern, Krystal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t played with her since Washington State,\u201d Leger-Walker said. \u201cI thought I would probably get a chance here in the Tall Ferns, but obviously different things happened. I got injured, she\u2019s had a baby, and the paths just didn\u2019t cross as we planned out.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, when I was thinking about what I wanted to do in the off-season, I knew that would always be a possibility for me. Going through the talks with different teams and Krystal, I was seeing where she would end up, and that just happened to be the Queens. <\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, they\u2019re an amazing organisation. I\u2019m really excited to be a part of everything they\u2019ve created, and I think that the other side of that is I haven\u2019t been home for longer than two weeks at a time throughout my past six years. That opportunity to come back, play in front of my friends, my family, reconnect with everyone back in New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leger-Walker is aware of the talk around her achievements in Aotearoa, but has not felt the external noise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know there\u2019s a lot of talk and hype around me and basketball back home, but I really haven\u2019t experienced that, so I\u2019m really excited to kind of come home and just connect with my people again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leger-Walker said it was easy getting clearance from the Sun to compete back home.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorically, all of the athletes have always played overseas, because honestly, prior to this year, the pay wasn\u2019t as great. People couldn\u2019t afford to spend six months out of the year not doing anything, you know? So a lot of them would go to Europe, or Asian countries to try and supplement their contracts.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, obviously, there\u2019s a little bit more room, because people are getting paid a lot more. You can have an entire off-season where you don\u2019t have to do much, but players have done that for as long as the league has been around.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CharlisseCharlisse Leger-Walker won the NCAA women’s national championship with UCLA. Photo \/ Getty<\/p>\n

When asked if her presence in Tauihi could become annual, Leger-Walker said she is working things out season by season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really depends on how I\u2019m looking, in the W [WNBA] and that longevity there. So, definitely I\u2019m not saying no, but I\u2019m gonna have my options open.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leger-Walker described her WNBA experience<\/a> as \u201cbuzzy\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery team has some sort of superstar, some all-star person that I\u2019ve been able to watch for years. For me coming in, it\u2019s been full go. We came right off the back of the college season, and I feel like it\u2019s just been game after game.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a lot of learning, a lot of ups and downs, definitely grown a lot, learned a lot about myself as a player and this league, but it\u2019s just been such a cool opportunity. I\u2019m grateful every day that I wake up and have a job, and it\u2019s one of the coolest jobs in the world, I think. Just to do something that I love and at the highest level has been really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leger-Walker said the biggest thing she has gained from playing for the Sun is self-belief.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have proven to myself and to a lot of other people that I can be competitive in this league and compete with the best, and I think that\u2019s been a really cool realisation for me. I think I\u2019ve always had that belief that I can do that, but seeing it play out, and actually doing it in real life is completely different.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think stepping into this space and onto this stage has been a big confidence booster for me, and wanting to play the best basketball I can against the best players, so that\u2019s been really cool to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Connecticut Sun\u2019s last WNBA regular season game is September 25, with the Tokomanawa Queens\u2019 Tauihi season opener on September 27 against the Northern Kahu.<\/p>\n

Nathan Limm<\/a> has been a journalist with Newstalk ZB and the NZ Herald since 2020. He covered the Netball World Cup in Cape Town in 2023, hosts The Big League Podcast<\/a> and commentates rugby and netball for Gold Sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She went to play college basketball at Washington State, and is currently on a four-year, $2m contract in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,443167,22279,8835,443168,23745,24700,2953,85,4031,443171,443169,443170,3605,5941,22671],"class_list":["post-874163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-charlisse","tag-competition","tag-kiwi","tag-legerwalker","tag-queens","tag-returning","tag-signs","tag-sports","tag-star","tag-tauihi","tag-tauihis","tag-tokomanawa","tag-with","tag-wnba","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}