Chatham’s Bridget Carleton is back home after finishing her seventh season in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA).<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old made it to the semi-finals with the Minnesota Lynx, but lost out on a potential championship to the Phoenix Mercury.<\/p>\n
“It’s really hard to win a WNBA Championship. There are lots of good teams,” said Carleton.<\/p>\n
It was still a successful season for Carleton, who started all 44 regular-season games and six playoff games for the Lynx, doing so for the first time in her career. While statistically she had a down year, she was still able to average 6.5 points, 3.6 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game.<\/p>\n
Carleton explained that the last few seasons have been a learning experience for her. This is because the sport’s popularity has exploded, with many teams selling out NBA and NHL-sized arenas.<\/p>\n
“It’s been fun to be a part of that growth, but it’s been a huge difference,” she explained.<\/p>\n
What hasn’t changed is Carleton’s popularity in Chatham-Kent (CK). Not only is she the only one from the municipality in the WNBA, she’s just one of four current Canadian players.<\/p>\n
“Anytime I get the chance to come back home and get in the gym and see the Chatham-Kent Wildcats or my old high school practice or play is really fun. The girls recognize me and are excited about meeting me,” she said.<\/p>\n
Right now, Carleton is just trying to enjoy the offseason. She’s currently a free agent, but isn’t thinking about signing anywhere until a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is agreed upon ahead of next season.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think anybody is thinking free agency until that’s figured out… I’m just going to figure out what happens when the time comes,” she added.<\/p>\n
Carleton did say she’s enjoyed her time in Minnesota, noting that Minnesotans are very similar to Canadians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chatham’s Bridget Carleton is back home after finishing her seventh season in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA).…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-234555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}