Prior to 2024 the Bay Area had zero representation in major women\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Professional Women\u2019s Hockey League on Tuesday officially announced San Jose as one of four expansion teams, bringing the league total to 12. A team name has yet to be decided. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan pitched the \u201cHammerheads\u201d as a nod to the late Susan Hammer, who served as the city\u2019s mayor from 1991-99. Sports icons Brandi Chastain and Kristi Yamaguchi were blazing their own paths then.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chastain, the former U.S. soccer star, and Yamaguchi, the 1992 Olympic gold medalist figure skater, alike grew up in the Bay with no local women\u2019s team sports to aspire to. Chastain joked she thought she would be a 49er \u201cbecause that\u2019s what my dad watched on television.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amy Scheer, the PWHL executive vice president of business operations, said there are only three Californian players in the league.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the heels of Chastain\u2019s co-founding of Bay FC,<\/a> a historic first for mainstream women\u2019s sports in the Bay Area, and the smashing success of a Golden State Valkyries<\/a> franchise that most recently became the first pro women\u2019s sports team to reach a $1 billion valuation, per CNBC, the PWHL wants a piece. What took so long?<\/p>\n \u201cTruth?\u201d Chastain asked. \u201cDecision makers seeing women\u2019s sports as viable \u2026 because women have always believed in women\u2019s sports. It takes one visionary to make a move, and all of a sudden there\u2019s something in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n The Valkyries and Bay FC were proof of concept. As of Tuesday morning Scheer said PWHL San Jose has already received upwards of 1,000 deposits for season tickets. San Jose Sharks president Jonathan Becher said early fan sentiment has been \u201coverwhelming.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n On the topic of season-ticket sales Becher added, \u201cThey told me a number (to expect). We\u2019re already well above that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prior to 2024 the Bay Area had zero representation in major women\u2019s sports leagues. Two short years since,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89,127,8859],"class_list":["post-323534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-sports","tag-womens-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323534","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=323534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}