It's more than basketball, Valkryies are creating community

#WelcometoBallhalla

I’m a Boomer, 68, and have been around sports all my life. I played basketball in high school before Title IX under “girls rules”, 6 players on each side, you couldn’t cross center court. Offense and defense and I was defense.

I was tall and good. I never dreamed of being a professional basketball player, it didn’t exist, wasn’t a possibility when I graduated high school in 1974.

I played for fun and for hours with boys. I idolized Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Earl the Pearl Monroe, Clyde Frazier (who I met at a Warriors game), Bill Russell, and especially Bill Bradley.

The games only came on Sundays and I watched with my dad. I was 17 years old before I saw any professional sports in person. I was a freshman in college in Atlanta, Georgia at Emory University, and I saw the Atlanta Hawks versus the Milwaukee Bucks and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was playing.

Skip forward to 1997 when the WNBA started and there was a team in Sacramento and an ABL (American Basketball League) which folded in 1998) team in San Jose, I attended and covered both. I even got to cover the New York Liberty in 2000 at Madison Square Garden and see them honor Kim Parrot, the first active player in the WNBA to die.

But it was just sports as usual. Skip forward to 2025 when I learned that the WNBA was coming to San Francisco, the team would be the first expanision team since the Atlanta Dream in 2008. They would play at Chase Center where I saw the Warriors play and they would be called the Golden State Valkryies.

I was ignorant to Norse mythology and had no idea that a valkyrie was a woman “warrior” who guided souls of the dead to the god Odin to Valhalla. Hence #welcometoballhalla!

Yes it is basketball, but so much more, GSV have sold out 9 consecutive home games. Sold 10,000 season tickets. And the folks that come out to celebrate these women athletes from the little kids to the grown men and professional athletes with Brandin Podziemski of the GSW leading the charge.

GSV is currently 8-7, 6th place out of 13 in the standings with the top 8 teams going to the playoffs.

The game on 6/27/2025 was a Pride Celebration. To see the queer communities celebrated brought tears of joy to my eyes. Most notably Harper Steele, celebrity grand marshall for the 2025 San Francisco Pride Parade. And the first openly transgender Miss USA contestant Kataluna Enriquez (2021) performed at half-time. Jason Brock sang the National Anthem a cappella.

But it is the community, the families, the Valqueeries who have their own IG page, the gatherings at Rikki’s, a women’s sports bar, strangers talking on public transportation to anyone with Valkryie geer or purples on, the Asian communites coming out to celebrate coach Natalie Nasake. The pure joy and excitement win or lose. It is an experience and fun and filled with joy.

The isolation is over and every game 18,064 plus folks experience ballhalla.