Is anything crazier in life, more jarring to our senses, than a WNBA game? No league is more influential about the well-being of women’s sports, yet two female fans spent a night in Seattle without a specific focus on the outcome. They were supporting Sophie Cunningham, a fanciful blond from the Indiana Fever who poses in bikinis with her rump in the air, thanking her because she doesn’t embrace transgender athletes.
She wants to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who should not have to go against biological men.” Cunningham hardly is alone with her campaign, in her daily enterprise and across America. But torrents of corporate backlash stunned the fans who wore t-shirts with the XX and XY chromosomes. The message: Two 16-year-olds were supportive of female development and male development.
The co-owner of the Seattle Storm, Celeste Keaton, should have been thrilled about the entire weeknight audience at Climate Pledge Arena. For some godforsaken reason, she went ballistic on the girls, who waved a poster that said, “Thank you Sophie for speaking up for girls!” The scene enraged the woman who owns the team.
“She told us we were f—ing insane,” one girl told podcaster Brandi Kruse.
Said the other, quoting Keaton: “You need to stop pulling this.”
Why does she own an WNBA franchise when the general idea is for people to show up and enjoy games? Does Keaton only want fans who don’t like XX and XY chromosomes? Imagine attending events in other sports and having an owner demand that you must be gay to enter the gates. That is no way to sell a league where Caitlin Clark is “a baller” — as Barack Obama called her last weekend — and lures me to watch her shoot and dish regardless of her sexuality. The disgraceful commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, needs all types of humanity to watch in person and on television.
Here we have another scene that blurs our viewership of women and hoops. When it isn’t players beating up Clark — or Paige Bueckers and Angel Reese betting $400 on a game between their teams — now we wonder if fans will cheer or boo Cunningham. The WNBA suspended Keaton from attending five home games and fined her an amount. “We respect the league’s decision to fine and suspend co-owner Celeste Keaton,” the Storm said in a statement, opposing her viewpoint. “We remain committed to creating a welcoming and respectful environment for anyone who attends a Storm game.”
Wrote Cunningham on social media afterward: “I truly believe there is a safe space and love for EVERYBODY. Biological girls, biological boys, trans women, and trans men. Everyone is welcome at my table! You can disagree and still be kind. Bravo to the girls for standing up for what they believe. You’ll be hearing from me … yay for gifts. Truly embarrassing of the co-owner. Unfortunately shows the type of leader she is.”
The road trip continued for Cunningham, Clark and the Fever. In Portland, fans booed Cunningham Friday after a pro-Sophie demonstration outside Moda Center. She needed some help and received it from activist Amy Sousa, who said, “Seeing what happened to those girls (in Seattle), we just thought, ‘We can’t be quiet.’ I don’t want to be quiet about this. I want to stand in public solidarity with those girls. I also want to stand in public solidarity with Sophie and keep this momentum going.”
What’s next? Minnesota on Sunday. Anybody wanting wildness should attend Fever games. “I think at the end of the day, I come in and I do my job,” Cunningham said. “I think everyone who knows me personally, they know that I’m full of love. I’m bubbly. I love the people around me. I love basketball. I love inspiring the next generation and doing that in a positive light. And so that doesn’t even cross my mind. Doesn’t cross my teammates’ minds.
“And again, I’m here to play basketball, but I’m also here to be me, and I’m not gonna like shadow that or hide or, you know, dim my light just because maybe people don’t agree with that. I think it’s people just practicing their rights of freedom of speech and doing what other fans have been doing since the WNBA has started. And so props to them, props to everyone who is able to be competent and be bold and courageous enough to speak their truths.”
So far, Keaton has not apologized to the girls. “After she was done, she kind of just walked away, and me and my friend were just like, ‘What just happened?’ Um, we were kind of stunned,” Ahnaleigh Wilson told Fox News. “I was like, ‘I’m not gonna cry, not gonna cry.’ ’’
She cried. “Um, but I feel like I kind of cry, I don’t know, when I feel overwhelmed or anything, honestly,” Wilson said. “So I started crying a little, and I was kind of embarrassed, because I really didn’t want to.”
Said her mother, Elizabeth, who would appreciate feedback from the Storm or the WNBA: “They owe these girls an apology. She needs to be held accountable. We teach our kids that every choice has a consequence, good or bad, and you have to own up to your mistakes.”
Who goes to a sports event and cries because the owner is off-center? “Seattle and this organization and Climate Pledge, we always want to be an area where people feel welcome coming into this building,” Storm coach Sonia Raman said. “I think we’ve always done a really good job with that. So I know our organization was working closely with Climate Pledge and the security just to make sure that everybody feels safe and included and welcome when they walk in this door.
“From what I understand, that was successful.”
Until Sophie Cunningham arrives in your town.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host.