Brandi Chastain greets members of San Jose Jr. Sharks on stage for a photo during Sharks Sports and Entertainment press conference announcing San Jose as the newest franchise for the Professional Women’s Hockey League at SAP Center on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in San Jose Calif.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
Silvia Jacobo of San Mateo, and NCWHL player and member carries a sign welcoming the PWHL as she sits with NCWHL players and board members during Sharks Sports and Entertainment press conference announcing San Jose as the newest franchise for the Professional Women’s Hockey League at SAP Center on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in San Jose Calif.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
Prior to 2024 the Bay Area had zero representation in major women’s sports leagues. Two short years since, it has added the most valuable franchise in the WNBA, a soccer team that set an NWSL attendance record at Oracle Park, and now, a hockey club in the rapidly expanding PWHL.
The Professional Women’s Hockey League on Tuesday officially announced San Jose as one of four new expansion teams, bringing the league total to 12. Games will be played at the SAP Center, home to the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, starting in the 2026-27 season. A team name has yet to be decided. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan in the middle of the California Governor’s race showed up to pitch the “Hammerheads” as a nod to the late Susan Hammer, who served as the city’s mayor from 1991-99.
Bay Area sports icons Brandi Chastain and Kristi Yamaguchi were blazing their own paths then.
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Chastain, a World Cup champion, and Yamaguchi, an Olympic gold medalist in figure skating, grew up in the Bay Area with no local women’s team sports to aspire to. Chastain joked she thought she would be a 49er “because that’s what my dad watched on television.” Both were on hand for
Tuesday’s unveiling at the SAP Center. As guest speakers they gave speeches, addressing a crowd of young girls, about a dozen of whom are part of the San Jose Jr. Sharks program. The hope is there’s more where they came from.
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On the heels of Chastain’s co-founding of Bay FC, a historic first for mainstream women’s sports in the Bay Area, and the smashing success of a Golden State Valkyries franchise that most recently became the first pro women’s sports team to reach a $1 billion valuation, everyone wants a piece.
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“When one league grows, it really helps elevate all of us,” Yamaguchi said.
What took so long? “Truth?” Chastain asked. “Decision-makers seeing women’s sports as viable … because women have always believed in women’s sports. It takes one visionary to make a move, and all of a sudden there’s something in the water.”
The Valkyries and Bay FC were proof of concept. The PWHL’s got next. Currently, there are only three Californian players in the league.
“It’s going to take a bit of time,” said Amy Scheer, PWHL executive vice president of business operations. “When our junior Sharks get their scholarships to Wisconsin and Ohio State and all those big schools, then we’ll start to have some more Californians in the league.”
As of Tuesday morning Scheer noted San Jose has received upwards of 1,000 deposits for season tickets. Sharks president Jonathan Becher added, “They told me a number (to expect). We’re already well above that.”
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Becher called early fan sentiment “overwhelming.” After several years of lobbying, he has finally got through to the PWHL about adding a team in San Jose. The league expanded by two last year. Becher said he tried then but came up short. If this year’s expansion afforded only another pair, he wasn’t so sure the “Shark Tank” (SAP Center’s nickname as home to the city’s NHL team) would make the cut. But four?
“When it was four I was pretty confident,” Becher said. “We’ve been hounding them for a long time.”
Hockey fervor in the U.S. more generally has been boiling in the aftermath of the men’s national team taking home gold at the Winter Olympics in Milan, and Scheer acknowledged the appeal of planting a team where men’s hockey has spent decades building its footprint, dating back to the Sharks’ inception in the 1990s: “It’s always nice to find a partner that feels you’re additive to what they’re doing and not competitive to what they’re doing, and we feel that that’s the case here with the Sharks.”
Tuesday was quite the production. The lot of Chastain, Yamaguchi, Mahan, Scheer and Becher were wheeled in from the far tunnel in sleek-silver Chevrolet lowriders with ocean blue headlights. Only three seasons old, the PWHL finds itself in the left lane. A reporter asked Scheer why the league’s first team in California wasn’t farther south, in a place like Los Angeles. She smiled and said nothing.
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Perhaps the answer was obvious. Women’s sports is Hollywood in the Bay Area.
“We have been waiting,” Chastain said.