{"id":654959,"date":"2026-05-20T19:07:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/654959\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T19:07:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:07:27","slug":"long-live-the-monarchs-giving-sacramentos-wnba-team-their-due-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/654959\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Long Live the Monarchs\u2019: Giving Sacramento\u2019s WNBA Team Their Due"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a sports history fact: In 2005, Wheaties released their first-ever special-edition box that featured an\u00a0entire women\u2019s professional team<\/a>. The famous breakfast of champions cereal had established a reputation for celebrating Olympians like Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan, but never a women\u2019s team.<\/p>\n

The athletes who finally made executives at General Mills change their minds? The Sacramento Monarchs of the WNBA.<\/p>\n

The Monarchs \u2014 who played basketball in the state capital as one the league\u2019s founding eight franchises, beginning in 1997 \u2014 won a national championship that year, and later went to the White House to meet the President. To date, the Monarchs are the only professional team from Sacramento in any sport to achieve such a feat.<\/p>\n

\"\"Ticha Penicheiro of the Sacramento Monarchs throws a pass under the basket against Ruth Riley of the Detroit Shock during Game 3 of the 2006 WNBA Finals September 3, 2006 at ARCO Arena in Sacramento, California.\u00a0(Jed Jacobsohn\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Led by Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame stalwarts like Yolanda Griffith, Ruthie Bolton and Ticha Penicheiro, the Monarch squad became an enduring contender in a rugged, nascent era of the \u201cW,\u201d winning two Western Conference championships en route to their coveted league trophy. In their heyday, the Monarchs ranked among the league\u2019s premier units, regularly amassing an army of women\u2019s hoop supporters from across Northern California at Arco Arena.<\/p>\n

So what happened? Today, with record-breaking attendance for the WNBA and a zealous fanbase for the Golden State Valkyries in San Francisco, why do so few people remember the Monarchs?<\/p>\n

\u2018A Sacramento that could have been\u2019<\/p>\n

Despite disbanding in 2009, the Monarchs\u2019 legacy remains intact in Sacramento, if you know where to look. Step inside Golden 1 Center in downtown Sacramento \u2014 home of the NBA\u2019s Sacramento Kings, and where the NCAA hosted games for the women\u2019s March Madness tournament this season \u2014 and you\u2019ll find Monarchs banners hanging high from otherwise empty rafters.<\/p>\n

Since 1985, when the Kansas City Kings originally migrated to Sacramento to become the city\u2019s first major professional sports team, the area has struggled to maintain credible franchises. They\u2019ve even been the butt of jokes in national sports discourse (see:\u00a0the \u201cWest Sacramento\u201d Athletics<\/a>). The Monarchs were the city\u2019s defiant exception, reaching the postseason nine times in 13 seasons.<\/p>\n

\"\"Ticha Penicheiro of the Sacramento Monarchs shoots a layup during the game against the Seattle Storm at Key Arena in Seattle, Washington.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, off the court, poor ownership decisions led to the team\u2019s financial unraveling. After threats of moving both the Kings and Monarchs to Seattle or Anaheim, the Maloof family, who took control of both teams in 1998, decided to divest from the Monarchs and focus on their male NBA counterparts. The sudden announcement left a gaping vacuum in Northern California\u2019s professional women\u2019s basketball landscape for the next 15 years.<\/p>\n

As the Kings floundered, the Monarchs were largely forgotten by most. But not all.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a part of various Facebook groups for \u2018Bring Back the Monarchs\u2019 campaigns. With the rise of the WNBA and other teams, there\u2019s a lot of chatter here to bring the team back,\u201d says Terra Lopez, 41, a Sacramento-raised musician whose first job was as a Monarchs ball girl at age 15. \u201cWhy don\u2019t we have them anymore? That love has never been lost. Around town, there are folks, including myself, who rock our Monarchs gear still. There\u2019s an appreciation for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel Tutupoly, a 35-year-old barista, agrees. Though he first fell in love with basketball through the Kings, he quickly realized that the Monarchs were equally entertaining, not to mention more successful, than their male counterparts. Like Lopez, he has refused to completely relinquish his nostalgia for Sacramento\u2019s bygone WNBA glory.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The loss of the Monarchs] doesn\u2019t make any sense, in hindsight,\u201d says Tutupoly, who grew up in Sacramento. \u201cThe owners just treated it like a business, rather than considering any of the cultural value. The team was an afterthought, always secondary to Kings. I know a bunch of people here who are excited about the Valkyries right now and drive out to games regularly. So imagine the support there would be for the Monarchs, compared to 20 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018Long Live the Monarchs,\u2019 a special issue of Daniel Tutupoly\u2019s Late Pass zine.\u00a0(Daniel Tutupoly)<\/p>\n

In April, Tutupoly released \u201cLong Live The Monarchs,\u201d a DIY zine dedicated solely to memories of the Monarchs. Inspired by old school issues of\u00a0Sports Illustrated for Kids, the Monarchs-edition zine \u2014 part of a larger series,\u00a0Latepass, that Tutupoly began making during the pandemic \u2014 includes crossword puzzles, digital collages, individual player statistics, stickers and more.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a physical vestige of the city\u2019s pride and pain, of having lost despite winning, of everything that Sacramento was and no longer is.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Monarchs represent a Sacramento that could have been, in sports but also in every sector of the city,\u201d says Lopez, who played basketball at Sacramento High School as a teenager and recalls the team\u2019s social and cultural impact early on. \u201c[The Monarchs] really took the time outside of their games to connect with younger players in the city. That meant everything to me and all of my teammates, and Sacramento in general. It gave us something to embody and envision in a future that we didn\u2019t have before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Queens on and off the court<\/p>\n

In 2020, Lopez launched\u00a0The WNBA History Club,<\/a>\u00a0a podcast that briefly looks at the league\u2019s founding and figures (Lopez later hosted the NPR-syndicated podcast,\u00a0This is What It Feels Like<\/a>, in 2023). Through it all, she has maintained a vociferous fandom of the Monarchs, having attended the inaugural Monarchs game in 1997 and participated in early community events hosted by the team in local parking lots.<\/p>\n

\"\"Yolanda Griffith of the Sacramento Monarchs celebrates after defeating the Connecticut Sun during Game 4 to win the WNBA Finals September 20, 2005 at Arco Arena in Sacramento, California.\u00a0(Jed Jacobsohn\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

In addition to the larger-than-life players, an essential element of the Monarchs\u2019 social contributions to Sacramento came from the fans themselves, many of whom were openly queer.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a queer person, that was my first representation of seeing queer elders,\u201d Lopez says. \u201cThat was out in the open for me for the first time. Queer, older people experiencing joy. That was powerful for me, to know I could have that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It all ended far too quickly. In an interview on\u00a0Knuckleheads, a reputable NBA player podcast, Monarchs\u2019 All-Star point guard Ticha Penicheir said that \u201cthe team folded in 2009 and it was kind of out of nowhere, nobody expected it. We never really had a chance to say goodbye to our fans. To thank them.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a commonly held sentiment by local fans. The way in which the team\u2019s demise came out of thin air is particularly Sacramentan, according to Lopez, who says the city has constantly fumbled good opportunities due to a conservative mindset. Perhaps that has been the hardest part of it all.<\/p>\n

\"\"President George W. Bush looks at a jersey as Yolanda Griffith, from the 2005 WNBA Champion Sacramento Monarchs, presents it to him at the White House May 16, 2006 in Washington, DC.\u00a0(Win McNamee\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cYou had to be there to really understand the significance of it for Sacramento: historically, culturally, not only in sports,\u201d Lopez says. \u201cFrom a fan\u2019s perspective, we had so much going. There was so much more potential left. But as tragic as losing the Monarchs was, the people who were in the building at Arco [have] a love and pride for the team that is so palpable. That still exists in Sacramento, too.”<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the most important words that Monarchs fans would ever hear came from the in-game announcer during the 2005 WNBA Finals, who enthusiastically called out for the first and last time in Sacramento\u2019s tormented sporting existence: \u201cRejoice, capital city, rejoice!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s a sports history fact: In 2005, Wheaties released their first-ever special-edition box that featured an\u00a0entire women\u2019s professional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[282408,120210,49245,99,434],"class_list":["post-654959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-long-live-the-monarchs-giving-sacramentos-wnba-team-their-due","tag-capital-public-radio","tag-cpr","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654959","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=654959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}