As a coach who works with younger athletes daily, Gartner has immediately seen the impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been transformational already. Whether they realize it or not, young girls absorb what they see. And now they\u2019re seeing women lead at the highest levels: on the court, in the front office, on coaching staffs, in media coverage. That visibility is changing the narrative,\u201d she said. \u201cTheir dreams are expanding in real time. That kind of representation wasn\u2019t there when I was growing up, but now it\u2019s right in front of them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like Gartner, Sue Phillips has also dedicated her career to youth girls basketball in the greater Bay Area. Phillips balances her powerhouse girls\u2019 basketball program at Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose with her role as founder and program director for the San Jose Cagers AAU organization and her junior national team coaching duties for USA Basketball. She still finds time to cheer on the Valkyries.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crowd is a testament to how much the Bay Area wants to support our women\u2019s sports,\u201d Phillips said. \u201cThere were some naysayers that might\u2019ve said that a women\u2019s team would not receive the kind of support necessary to be financially viable, but it\u2019s truly proven to be that and more.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before the Valkyries\u2019 owner Joe Lacob brought his expansion team vision to life and the brand new team suited up for the 2025 season, local women\u2019s basketball fans got their fix watching storied women\u2019s basketball programs at Stanford and Cal.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a coach who works with younger athletes daily, Gartner has immediately seen the impact. \u201cIt\u2019s been transformational…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[2473,62,67,132,68,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-19152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-golden-state-valkyries","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us","13":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114755560060722269","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}