Valkyries Players Celebrated Their Championship Win With These Songs

It’s an hour before a winner-take-all WNBA Finals game and Kaitlyn Chen is dressed up in a glittery hot dog costume with knee-high boots, hitting the Quan with Veronica Burton and Kaila Charles in the Golden State Valkyries’ locker room. That type of team synergy is not all that common in professional sports — and it is a big part of the secret sauce that earned the Valkyries a championship in their second year of existence.

How did the players celebrate their win, you ask? Immediately after their victory, in the locker room, they sang along to Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” — a nod to how the Valkyries point guard Veronica Burton trained at her local YMCA gym after being cut from the Dallas Wings roster at the start of the 2024 WNBA season.

Indeed, the championship represents so much for the players on this team, who never received the attention they deserved on their previous teams but found their spark with GSV. It is fitting, then, that the other song they all screamed the words to in the locker room was Beyoncé’s “Best Thing I Never Had.”

On top of their incredible athleticism, music has been a key ingredient in the Valkyries’ success, whether it’s the songs that hype up fans at Ballhalla or the superstars — like Kehlani and E-40— sitting courtside. With that in mind, we took to Instagram to find out what tracks the players chose to celebrate their historic victory.

Originally from Reno, Gabby Williams spent summers playing basketball in the East Bay, and has celebrated her Bay Area roots throughout the season. After winning her first playoff game of the year in September, in her post-game interview she said she “couldn’t lose in front of Too $hort,” who was in attendance. She then asked the crowd in Ballhalla “What’s my favorite word?” — and over 18,000 fans responded with a resounding “biiiiiiaaaattttcchhh!!”

After the Valks clinched the championship, Williams posted a photo of her cat, Halle Berry, next to her Finals MVP trophy and soundtracked it with Too $hort’s “It’s Time to Go.” She knew when it was her time to get going — her scoring ability in clutch time won Valkyries the championship, as she put up a record-breaking 28 points in the second half of the game.

Before Saturday evening, Tiffany Hayes was the player in the WNBA with most games played without a championship. She was first drafted by the Atlanta Dream in 2012 — the team she ultimately played 10 seasons for before “retiring” in 2023, and the team she beat out in the finals this year.

Hayes came out of her retirement in 2024 to join the Las Vegas Aces, where she won the league’s Sixth Player of the Year award, before joining the Valkyries. Her song of choice was “Beam Ahhh” by DJ Chipman, a seasoned artist whose music had a viral resurgence in the 2020s. Perhaps the main takeaway here is to be patient and trust the process.

Veronica Burton is more than a point guard for the Valkyries — she is the spiritual leader, the floor manager and the glue that holds the team together in the face of adversity. She has started every single game for the Valkyries since the team’s inaugural season. She has also been open about her faith and how she finds her peace in studying the Bible.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Burton picked a worship song, “God I’m Just Grateful,” to cap her second year with the Valkyries. She’s a versatile leader that is as ready to fist bump to pop songs from Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus before a game (or, as previously mentioned, “Hit the Quan”) as she is to practice her faith or invite the players on the court to take a collective deep breath. Whatever her rituals may be, they’ve been working tremendously for her and the team.

Kaila Charles has been an essential part of this team for two seasons now, though she truly stepped up halfway through the finals, when Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase decided to place her in the starting lineup and secured a much-needed win in Game 4. It was a shocking move that the Atlanta Dream had no response for.

Charles, who herself is Trinidadian, chose Nicki Minaj’s “Moment 4 Life” as her theme song. “In this very moment, I’m king,” Minaj raps. Her 2010 hit single remains in the hip-hop pantheon — like how the Valkyries’ quick ascent to a chip will remain in the history books for a long time.