{"id":474362,"date":"2025-12-27T05:34:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T05:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/474362\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T05:34:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T05:34:30","slug":"a-basketball-trailblazer-my-mother-the-wnba-star-youve-never-heard-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/474362\/","title":{"rendered":"A Basketball Trailblazer: My Mother, the WNBA Star You\u2019ve Never Heard Of"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even 35 years after graduating from UH, my mom is still considered the best player \u2014 in both women\u2019s and men\u2019s sports \u2014 in the school\u2019s history. She was even honored with the title \u201cAll-Time American\u201d for her last two years of college.<\/p>\n

This spring, I actually got to visit the college to meet some of her former teammates and see the gym where the Wahines used to play. I kept trying to envision what it must have been like to be 18, a California girl on a basketball scholarship to Hawaii, double majoring and balancing good grades with her record-breaking basketball career. I truly do not know how she did it.<\/p>\n

The best part of the trip was visiting the current Wahines locker room to marvel at a giant photo on the wall. There was my mom, larger than life, going for a rebound, the only player to lead the Wahines in scoring and rebounding for four straight seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the ball was in the air, you don\u2019t know which way the ball was gonna bounce, but your mom did,\u201d her former assistant coach, George Wolfe, told me.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call it a nose for the ball,\u201d Wolfe said.<\/p>\n

Soon after graduating in 1990, my mom played overseas in places like Italy, Hungary, Japan and Spain. Once she met my dad, he traveled with her all over the world, witnessing the influence she had on the crowd. He told me it was like walking on clouds.<\/p>\n

\"\"Audy McAfee holds a family picture of her mother and aunt at her home in Oakland, on July 11, 2025. (Brian L. Frank\/KQED)<\/p>\n

In 1997, she was drafted to the Sacramento Monarchs for the WNBA\u2019s inaugural season. She was the sixth woman picked for the league \u2014 out of 32 women selected from around the globe.<\/p>\n

My mom\u2019s former teammate, Tajama Abraham, told me it wasn\u2019t easy to be a part of the first-ever women\u2019s basketball national league because there were no mentors.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re creating this whole women\u2019s pro thing from scratch. We had no understanding of what it [was] going to take at that level,\u201d Abraham said.<\/p>\n

And in those early years, the women\u2019s league didn\u2019t get the same coverage as the NBA<\/a> \u2014 and generated far less advertising revenue and corporate support.<\/p>\n

Back in that first year of the WNBA, female players only earned a base salary of $28,000 a season. Compare that to NBA players\u2019 base of $200,000.<\/p>\n

Even though my mom passed more than a decade ago, it feels good to get to know her better. To know that she paved the way for women\u2019s basketball and teams like the Golden State Valkyries to get the respect they deserve.<\/p>\n

\"\"Audy McAfee at her home in Oakland, on July 11, 2025. (Brian L. Frank\/KQED)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m grateful to get to know this side of my mom. She was a champion, a. A true warrior on and off the court. I didn\u2019t get to know her for very long, but she was, and still is, everything to me.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t remember how her voice sounds anymore, but I will always recall the smell of the fresh pots of rice she would make in the early morning, before her two-hour commute to work. I will always cherish her big gummy smile, the one we\u2019d see after she told a joke that usually only she thought was funny. I won\u2019t forget the way she would throw her hair up into a ponytail and curl her bangs with a bump.<\/p>\n

Like her favorite flower, she was a rose plucked too soon. Luscious, fleeting. A flower that left me with thorns all over because I held on too hard. And still, I would pick thorns out of my hands for the rest of my life if that meant I could see her again. If I make it to 45, I hope I\u2019m at least half as cool as she was.<\/p>\n

I may not blaze new trails or set new records like she did, but I know that if I just try my hardest and am genuine in what I do, everything will be okay.<\/p>\n

I love you, mommy.<\/p>\n

Audy McAfee produced this audio documentary as her master\u2019s thesis at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism\u2019s audio program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even 35 years after graduating from UH, my mom is still considered the best player \u2014 in both…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":474363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[62,67,132,68,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-474362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115789907818656200","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474362","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=474362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}