Growing up in Chatham, Ont., Bridget Carleton couldn’t imagine playing professional basketball in Canada.<\/p>\n
This season, she’s getting the chance.<\/p>\n
“It’s surreal,” the Portland Fire forward said before her team took on the Toronto Tempo in Vancouver on Friday. “I would never have imagined this when I was a kid growing up in Canada.”<\/p>\n
Carleton was lucky \u2014 her mom knew about the Detroit Shock and they travelled across the border to take in some games. But the WNBA remained largely inaccessible.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t see it on TV,” she said. “The fact that I’m 29 now, playing in Canada in a WNBA game, is just crazy. That kids have this to look up to in Canada, it’s just really cool, how much it’s evolved across America and also now Canada.”<\/p>\n
An announced crowd of 12,414 watched the Tempo (11-25) claw their way back from a 13-point deficit to beat the Fire 82-79 on Friday. The result ended Toronto’s 12-game losing skid.<\/p>\n
It was a crowd that gave the Tempo an extra boost, said centre Isabelle Harrison.<\/p>\n
“It felt good. I just felt like we had the momentum on our side because all the fans were here,” she said. “Canada really showed up for us today.”<\/p>\n
Portland (15-21) jumped out to an early lead, thanks in part to the nine points Carleton scored in the first six minutes of the game.<\/p>\n
Toronto rallied, though, and levelled the score at 44-44 heading into halftime.<\/p>\n
Fans jumped to their feet midway through the third quarter when Harrison muscled her way through traffic and put in a layup that gave Toronto a 58-53 lead.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been told since being here, they respect hard basketball players. And they love basketball out here,” she said. “I’m just, first and foremost, into my team, playing hard for them. But making sure the crowd has something to cheer for. They showed up for us today.”<\/p>\n
The noise inside Rogers Arena on Friday was so loud at times that Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello had trouble communicating with her teammates.<\/p>\n
“We felt the support,” she said. “When we made big plays, it was hard for me even to talk in some of the timeouts there. I’m just happy the fans got to see us play. We are Canada’s team and they’re behind us.”<\/p>\n
Friday’s game is part of the Tempo’s Cross Canada series, which also saw Toronto play a pair of games at Montreal’s Bell Centre in July.<\/p>\n
The first matchup, a 108-95 loss to the Dallas Wings, drew a crowd of 20,996, setting an attendance record for a WNBA regular-season game.<\/p>\n
Visiting different parts of the country is simply part of the Tempo’s identity, said Brondello.<\/p>\n
“We’re trying to build more fans and show them what the Tempo is about and make these players household names,” she said. “Hopefully we can get more new fans, and not just for the Tempo, for the WNBA.”<\/p>\n
Brondello has been part of the WNBA for 27 of its 30 seasons as either a player or a coach.<\/p>\n
Bringing an expansion team to Canada has had its challenges, she said, but seeing the evolution of women’s basketball has been great.<\/p>\n
“Our league has grown so much,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We had expansions early, and it wasn’t the right time. This was the right time. I think the sponsorship and the eyes that we have on us is amazing, and the visibility. And any time that you can go to a new city, it’s an opportunity, isn’t it? So we’re a global game, but Canada is making this sport even bigger and better.”<\/p>\n
The Tempo will stay in Vancouver for the weekend, hosting a fan festival on Saturday before taking on the Las Vegas Aces at Rogers Arena on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The trip shows how much the league has grown in recent years, said Toronto guard Brittney Sykes.<\/p>\n
“It’s just experiencing the type of fandom that we’re getting, the type of buy-in that we’re getting, the type of expansion that we’re getting \u2014 I wouldn’t have thought we had a team in Canada, and now we do,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I just want us to keep putting out a really great product for these little girls and every little kid \u0393\u00c7\u00aa just to believe that they can make it to the next level.”<\/p>\n
Watching WNBA games in Canada will be huge for coming generations of basketball players across the country, Carleton said.<\/p>\n
“Seeing women professional athletes playing so close to home, the sky’s the limit. You don’t have to have small dreams,” said the two-time Olympian.<\/p>\n
“I think that’s the biggest thing, is what you can see, you can be. And I would have loved that as a kid. And so now I’m really honoured to be that for somebody else. To have professional women’s sports in Canada, it’s a dream come true.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Growing up in Chatham, Ont., Bridget Carleton couldn’t imagine playing professional basketball in Canada. This season, she’s getting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":867475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-867474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867474","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=867474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}