When Teresa Resch first spotted a Toronto Tempo jersey \u201cin the wild\u201d, she stopped in her tracks.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo see a random person wearing your jersey, that was pretty cool,\u201d the team president said. \u201cSo I went up and said hello and introduced myself and took a picture, put her on my Instagram page.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Resch, it was a quiet but powerful sign Canada\u2019s first WNBA team had crossed from idea to reality — not in a boardroom or at a podium, but on the street, worn by someone who already felt connected to it.<\/p>\n
Tonight, the Tempo tip off their inaugural season when they host the Washington Mystics at Coca-Cola Coliseum, the culmination of months of compressed preparation and years of belief that professional women\u2019s basketball would finally have a permanent home north of the border.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat am I feeling right now? What I\u2019ll go with is extreme excitement,\u201d Resch said in an interview with Reuters. \u201cIt\u2019s truly a culmination of so many people\u2019s work, (but) not just the people working on it now, but so many people who have laid the groundwork ahead of us.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be historic in so many ways, and there are a lot of people who never thought this day would come.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sense of scale has sharpened quickly.<\/p>\n
In roughly a 20\u2011day span this spring, the Tempo named a new principal owner in former Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri, unveiled their court, announced plans for a performance center, selected players in the expansion draft, went on sale with single-game tickets — selling out multiple games — and opened training camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of this is happening really quickly,\u201d Resch said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Behind the scenes, the work has been relentless from negotiating player housing, furnishing apartments and setting up banking systems and communications. Even sourcing a tarp large enough to cover a basketball court for the team\u2019s public unveiling took days.<\/p>\n
Despite the pace, symbolic moments have made the scale of the project feel real. The Tempo\u2019s first-ever draft pick, UCLA\u2019s Kiki Rice, was one. Another was the signing of Kia Nurse, a leader of Canada\u2019s national team for more than a decade who never expected to play professionally at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know you\u2019re building something bigger than the Tempo, bigger than Toronto, bigger than Canada, when players who have never stepped foot here want to come play for your team,\u201d Resch said.<\/p>\n
More than a city team<\/p>\n
From the outset, the franchise has framed itself as more than a city team. At the Tempo\u2019s launch, owner Larry Tanenbaum made that explicit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe name may be Toronto Tempo, but this is Canada\u2019s team,\u201d he told those in attendance.<\/p>\n
Resch believes the franchise has a rare opportunity to claim that identity immediately, something that took the Raptors years to grow into, partly because Canada also had the Vancouver Grizzlies before they relocated to Memphis for the 2001-02 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s only happened over time (for the Raptors), and winning the championship in 2019 definitely solidified that,\u201d Resch said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut for the Tempo, we have an incredible opportunity that we get to start as Canada\u2019s team.\u201d<\/p>\n
The club has already held events in Vancouver and Montreal, and will play regular\u2011season games in both cities.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery decision we make, we\u2019re keeping that (Canada) lens,\u201d Resch said.<\/p>\n
Women\u2019s health in focus<\/p>\n
The ambition stretches beyond basketball.<\/p>\n
Asked about the impact the Tempo could have on girls and women, Resch pointed to the Raptors\u2019 transformative effect on the men\u2019s game in Canada, now reflected in a national team filled with NBA players.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat wasn\u2019t the case 30 years ago,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you can see it, you can be it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Resch stressed that the team\u2019s purpose goes further.<\/p>\n
The club recently launched Tempo Impact, a social impact platform rooted in a sobering statistic: women in Canada live an average of 20 percent of their lives in poorer health than men.<\/p>\n
Tempo Impact focuses on physical, mental and social health, working with partners including Canada Basketball, Canadian Women & Sport and Women\u2019s College Hospital Foundation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are only about 160 players in the WNBA in the entire world,\u201d Resch said. \u201cSo not every Canadian girl is going to be a professional basketball player.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what we can do is make sure they\u2019re active, that they find the benefits of sport and that they find community, through fandom and being associated with the Tempo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Resch resigned from her role as a longtime Raptors executive in March 2024 and was announced as president of Toronto\u2019s WNBA expansion team less than three months later.<\/p>\n
With opening night finally here, emotion sits close to the surface.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can you not be?\u201d Resch said. \u201cEspecially the last month, every day, every hour, every minute.\u201d<\/p>\n
Years from now, when people look back on the start of the first WNBA team in Canada, she hopes the defining memory will not be records or results but something bigger than a basketball team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope they say they felt included,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to build is an ecosystem, an environment, a team, where everybody can feel like they belong in that circle.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Resch, that idea carries particular weight in a country known for its diversity and \u201cspecifically Toronto is one of the most diverse cities in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about creating a space where you can show up as yourself and feel like you belong, where there\u2019s a place for you in this. I hope people feel that way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Teresa Resch first spotted a Toronto Tempo jersey \u201cin the wild\u201d, she stopped in her tracks. \u201cTo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-630457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}