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Crowds fill Golden 1 Center during women\u2019s March Madness tournament on March 29, 2026. (Felicia Alvarez)<\/p>\nThe Abridged version:<\/p>\n
Thousands of people filled Downtown Sacramento this weekend for the women\u2019s March Madness basketball tournament, a welcome sight for local fans who often have to travel out of town to catch women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n
Momentum is also growing for professional women\u2019s volleyball and indoor soccer leagues, which have sights on Sacramento.<\/p>\n
The tournament brought in a boost of $10 million to the local economy and 13,000 extra hotel room nights booked.<\/p>\n
Thousands of people rooted for women\u2019s basketball teams this weekend at the NCAA\u2019s Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games hosted at Golden 1 Center.<\/p>\n
Sacramento hosted six tournament games between Friday and Monday, drawing visitors from out of town and providing a seldom-seen opportunity to see high-profile women\u2019s sports in town. Women\u2019s sports have been scarce in Sacramento for more than 15 years, since its former WNBA team, the Monarchs, folded in 2009. The last time the city hosted the women\u2019s basketball NCAA tournament was in 2010.<\/p>\n
Tournament provides economic boost<\/p>\n
March Madness also brought an economic boost to the city, with an estimated $10 million generated for the local economy and 13,000 hotel room nights booked over the course of the tournament, according to Visit Sacramento.<\/p>\n
Jodie Gioia, who lives in Sacramento, donned her University of Connecticut sweater and a well-coifed mohawk before showing up for the Elite Eight game between Duke and UCLA on Sunday. She said she was touched to see the volume of people who arrived to cheer for the tournament.<\/p>\n
Gioia played as a forward on the UConn women\u2019s team until 1984, in the years \u201cbefore we were good,\u201d she joked. Today, the UConn Huskies are one of the most competitive women\u2019s basketball teams in NCAA Division I history.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was different when I started,\u201d Gioia said. \u201cThere was no future for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Shouldn\u2019t matter who\u2019s playing\u2019<\/p>\n
The WNBA wouldn\u2019t have its inaugural season until 1997. Even today, with a league of 15 teams, spots for players remain competitive. Many women\u2019s careers end after their college years.<\/p>\n
\u201cLittle boys, little girls, men, women, all generations are here to support,\u201d Gioia said. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t matter who\u2019s playing. We just want to see a good game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Megan Glaze and Rocky Glaze described themselves as relative newcomers to women\u2019s basketball fandom. Megan Glaze said NBA star Caitlin Clark initially captured her interest during Clark\u2019s breakout seasons in 2023 and 2024. That opened the door to WNBA fandom as well, she said.<\/p>\n
When they heard the tournament would be in Sacramento this year, the two were eager to travel from their home in Medford, Ore., to watch the games.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s electric, with all the fans getting into it,\u201d Rocky Glaze said.<\/p>\n
Crowds fill Golden 1 Center during women\u2019s March Madness tournament on March 29, 2026. (Felicia Alvarez)<\/p>\n
What happened to the Sacramento Monarchs?<\/p>\n
Three banners for the Sacramento Monarchs line the ceiling of the Golden 1 Center, despite the reality that the team folded before construction of the arena. The Monarchs, a highly competitive WNBA franchise, were the most recent team to bring home a league championship trophy, with their crowning win in 2005.<\/p>\n
The Maloof family, former owners of the Sacramento Kings, pulled the plug on the Monarchs franchise in 2009. At the time, the Maloofs said they were putting all of their resources into bringing \u201cchampionship caliber form\u201d to the Kings, the Associated Press reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n Katie Thornton and Fran Louis are used to flying from Sacramento to catch a Las Vegas Aces game or sitting through Bay Area traffic to see the Golden State Valkyries in San Francisco. When the March Madness tournament arrived in Sacramento, they knew they were going to sign up for a full weekend of games.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re rooting for everyone, because everyone watches women\u2019s sports,\u201d Thornton said during halftime at Sunday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n Former WNBA stars shine<\/p>\n The high point of the weekend was seeing stars they once watched on the WNBA court return to Sacramento as head coaches of the NCAA teams.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really cool to see coaches that we used to watch on the court leading these teams,\u201d Thornton said. \u201cIt\u2019s really cool to see this type of following and money in it. I hope it happens every year.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI love Dawn Stanley,\u201d Louis added, referring to the head coach of the University of South Carolina. \u201cShe looks like she could kick anyone\u2019s ass.\u201d<\/p>\n The games also marked a homecoming for Kara Lawson, a star on the former Sacramento Monarchs for seven seasons. Lawson returned as head coach of Duke\u2019s team, leading them to a buzzer-beating finish against LSU on Friday and a heated loss against UCLA for the Elite Eight game Sunday.<\/p>\n Professional women\u2019s volleyball, indoor soccer in the works<\/p>\n At least two new women\u2019s professional leagues are poised to have a presence in the Sacramento region.<\/p>\n In Rancho Cordova, construction is underway for a new 7,500-seat arena<\/a> that is set to host professional indoor soccer for both men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams. The new Major Arena Soccer League teams are expected to debut in fall 2027.<\/p>\n Major League Volleyball, which hosts women\u2019s teams, is also coming to Northern California under a team co-owned by Vivek Ranadiv\u00e9, the owner of the Kings.<\/p>\n The new team is anticipated to cover a territory that spans San Jose, San Francisco and Sacramento, according to a press release<\/a>. The Northern California volleyball team, which hasn\u2019t been named yet, is slated to play its first season in 2027.<\/p>\n Women\u2019s soccer expansion a question mark<\/p>\n While momentum is growing around professional soccer in Sacramento, with construction of a new 20,000-seat stadium in the Railyards, prospects for a women\u2019s team remain hazy.<\/p>\n Back in 2019, the National Women\u2019s Soccer League was in talks with Sacramento Republic FC about adding an expansion team in Sacramento. After a series of leadership shifts, the expansion team eventually landed in San Diego.<\/p>\n Representatives from the Sacramento Republic FC declined to comment directly on the possibility of professional women\u2019s soccer coming and indicated that it was not currently courting an NWSL expansion team.<\/p>\n Kings owner Ranadiv\u00e9 has long-hinted at WNBA prospects<\/p>\n Former Monarchs players rallied alongside Ranadiv\u00e9 to keep the Kings in Sacramento in early 2013, with hopes that a WNBA franchise could be revived in Sacramento.<\/p>\n Over the years, the owner of the Kings has alluded to the possibility of bringing back the WNBA franchise. <\/p>\n In 2022, Ranadiv\u00e9 told<\/a> Comstock\u2019s Magazine \u201cwe\u2019re thinking hard about how to expand the platform,\u201d referring to the Sacramento Monarchs.<\/p>\n Momentum has arrived from the upper ranks of the WNBA as well. Sacramento has been floated as a possible location for an expansion team, alongside the likes of Portland, Denver, Toronto, Philadelphia and Charlotte. In 2024, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert confirmed that Sacramento remained of interest<\/a>, after announcing that San Francisco would host a new team.<\/p>\n Representatives from the Kings did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Felicia Alvarez is a reporter at Abridged covering accountability. She\u2019s called Sacramento home since 2015 and has reported on government, health care and breaking news topics for both local and national news outlets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Abridged version: Thousands of people filled Downtown Sacramento this weekend for the women\u2019s March Madness basketball tournament,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122,65250,10540],"class_list":{"0":"post-245026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-sacramento","9":"tag-sacramento-headlines","10":"tag-sacramento-news","11":"tag-secondary-highlight","12":"tag-top-story"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Women's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AP26088733798039-1024x683.jpg.webp.webp\")
Duke head coach Kara Lawson celebrates after a shot-clock violation against UCLA during the NCAA college basketball tournament March 29, 2026, at Golden 1 Center. Lawson previously played for the Sacramento Monarchs, winning a WNBA championship with the team in 2005. (AP Photo\/Sara Nevis)<\/p>\n