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For San Francisco local and lifelong basketball fan Alyssa McCray, making a family excursion out of the Golden State Valkyries inaugural season opener on Friday night was a no-brainer.
“She needs to witness history,” McCray said, smiling at her 18-month-old daughter, who was clad in violet from her shoes to the ribbons fashioned in her curls.
“I played basketball myself and I’ve loved it since fifth grade, so full circle moment to have my daughter here with me,” McCray said, savoring the scene at the Chase Center’s Thrive City an hour before tip off. “I get really emotional because I feel like this is such a courageous, ambitious move for the city to show the power behind women’s sports.”
All around her, that same sense of emotion — excitement, pride, promise — echoed in thousands of supporters from all over the Bay Area as they flooded into the arena.
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Laurel, a young fan from Lafayette, hoisted a handmade “Big Things in the Bay Area” sign into the evening sky. Max, a San Francisco resident, corralled seven dogs he’d dressed in purple getup on the steps before Thrive City’s array of pregame amusements. Nine-year-old Essie from Piedmont sported a painted GSV icon on her face and a Valkyrie Violet wig to match with her mother’s as she looked onto the blooming mass.
At a restaurant bordering the square, friends Rachel Sunday and Eileen Johnson from the East Bay sat in “Everyone watches women’s sports” t-shirts, watching the magic of the WNBA’s 13th franchise and first expansion team since 2008 come to life.
“We’re both former female athletes — washed up now,” Sunday laughed. “But giving back to the game and supporting it truly with season tickets … was really important to us. It’s really important that young women — and older women, too — have something to cheer on outside of just male sports, which we love too, but spread the love.”
As the night unfolded inside Chase Center, Friday’s celebration only amplified, even as the team suffered an 84-67 loss to the Sparks. The sports-loving Bay Area community, still nursing the sting of the Warriors’ recent NBA playoff exit, honored the historic moment unfolding before it.
A sellout crowd of 18,064 coronated San Francisco’s newest professional sports team in its debut — and the organization’s “First of a Lifetime” giveaway shirts draped over every seat transformed an arena accustomed to blue and gold into a sea of violet. The charged atmosphere from start to finish proved what so many had already known to be true: the Valkyries were long overdue in the storied Bay Area sports ecosystem.
When Natalie Nakase was named head coach — and the first Asian-American head coach in the WNBA at that — in October 2024, a year after the blueprint for the Valkyries was made official, the former Las Vegas Aces assistant coach may not have known what was in store for her personnel-wise, but she always had a vision for the fanbase. And in the Valkyries’ debut, despite a 17-point defeat littered with 22 turnovers, Nakase saw it materialize.
“Loud, and that’s exactly what I wanted,” Nakase said. “If I could have dreamed of an environment and the hostility of it, the roars, the screams, the shouts — they’re going to support us so to have that type of crowd is surreal.”
From the ceremonial roster introduction, heartfelt ‘thank you’ sentiment from Valkyries guard and 12-year WNBA veteran Tiffany Hayes before tipoff, and premiere bucket courtesy of forward Kayla Thornton to the standing ovation at the final buzzer and arena-wide ‘Beat LA’ chants everywhere in between, Chase Center was nothing short of thunderous.
Point guard Julie Vanloo, a selection in the WNBA Expansion Draft from the Washington Mystics, felt that infectious energy fire her up when she hit a hot streak from 3-point range at the end of the third quarter. Vanloo, who later joked that she wanted to show off in front of Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, found the bottom of the net on back-to-back-to-back triples on a momentous swing.
“We already had a taste in the preseason game of how that crowd can really be a sixth man for us so that was the goal on that whole run and that’s why people come here,” she said. “This is the Bay Area, this is Chase Center, magic happens here.”
Hayes led her team in scoring on the night, supplying 19 points against the Sparks, while Temi Fagbenle and Vanloo added 15 and 14, respectively. While the outcome on the hardwood was not favorable for the Valkyries on their historic ascent, slipping up in the final frame and succumbing to the Sparks’ Kelsey Plum’s 37-point performance, the night was nonetheless a success in its own right — for the growth of and support for women’s hoops.
“It was amazing. I enjoyed myself,” Hayes reflected. “All in all, the crowd really gave us a lot of life out there. I wish we could’ve given a little more back, but at the end of the day, it’s the first game from us. I had fun out there and enjoyed the energy from the crowd.”
