All aboard the Valkyries bandwagon

This piece was featured first on Oct 8 for One Good Thing, a weekly newsletter brought to you by Alexis Madrigal about his take on Bay Area art, culture & nature. Subscribe today.

The Valkyries had been up the whole game, every minute. But after building two large leads, the Las Vegas Aces had come all the way back. With less than two minutes left in the game, they took the lead. For a few seconds, the crowd was quiet. Up on the Jumbotron, worried fans could hardly dance. Everyone in Ballhalla, the not-joking nickname for the Valkyries’ home floor, could feel the win slipping away.

Then, our first hero appeared: she held a sign that read, “Ballhalla believes!” And as she pointed at the words, exhorting us all, the Chase Center jolted back awake. You know what? We did believe. The crowd built back to a roar.

On the ensuing possession, the ball found our star, Gabby Williams, and she hit from midrange to tie it up. The Valkyries got a quick defensive stop and point guard Veronica Burton dribbled at the top of arc as the Valkyries settled into their offense. This was it.

Burton beat her defender, jittered into the paint and… headed right back out. She looked spooked, and maybe for good reason; she’d hadn’t hit a shot all night. She passed the ball to Williams and set up high above the three-point line.

With the shot clock winding down, Williams generated a little space with a couple dribbles and sent a pass back to Burton, who was just beyond the reach of Aces star A’Ja Wilson. This time, there was no hesitation. She shot from 28 feet out, the ball arcing up into the air, a slow-motion moment.

Here we all were—me, my daughter who hadn’t cared about basketball until this Valkyries team caught her imagination, and thousands of other fans. We were all dressed in violet and taking part in the most beautiful fan culture I’ve ever seen. It’s every good thing about sports minus the drunk guys who add a seam of possible violence to too many sporting events.

And there’s an added element of meaning, too: all these fans, across the gender spectrum, are rooting for these women, our team. My daughter will never know a world where whole stadiums full of people don’t cheer on women for their skill and toughness. She will always know that women can be the main characters not just for other women, but for everyone. She has seen it with her own eyes.

That ball, though. It was still floating up there, closer to the rim now, but if Burton missed, the odds would turn in the Aces favor. You don’t always get to be the hero who made the shot. Sometimes you miss.

And then: SPLASH. It! Went! In! It would take a while to sort out the free throws, but we all knew Burton won the game. We were hugging and jumping. That shot!

My daughter’s face was flushed. She could not help but cry out, “My heart is beating so fast!” Then, she took my hand and pressed it to her, so I could feel that little heart thumping, pushing blood to her whole self.

Earlier, at a fan tailgate over on Mississippi run by the Valkyries Votaries fan group, she had dutifully tended a circle of candles featuring our players (and Coach Nakase!). If the wind blew one out, she relit it as lavender-clad fans came by to eat hot dogs and purple rice crispy treats (“Moms gonna mom,” one of the organizers told me, laughing). They’d laid down a strip of glittering purple carpet as a sidewalk catwalk. It was all so happy and fun. We ran into friends. We talked excitedly about going to the finals maybe. But seriously, it was the candle ritual that clinched the game for us. You do believe this, too, right?

My dad and I went to hundreds of sporting events while I was growing up. So much of last night was familiar. The agony, the ecstasy, the long walk back to the car, the whoops and mutual recognitions. We called my parents on the ride home and sent them our celebratory video. They had watched the game, too, knowing we were there, and they’ve clearly caught the bug. Valkyries love spreads easily and the bandwagon has infinite seats. (Tho the Chase Center doesn’t, so if you get a line on tickets for the next game, hit me up!)

We got home late and the poor kid still had homework. For a minute in the car ride home, wrung out by all the emotions, tears squirted from her eyes just thinking about adjectives and her project on Honduras. How was she gonna get everything done and get enough sleep? But we calmly drew up a plan of everything that needed doing, and when we walked in the door, she executed flawlessly.

The second the light went off in her room, she was asleep, and I just knew the realm of her dreams had expanded.

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