Charlotte gets a second shot at women’s pro basketball

Inside Bojangles Coliseum on a Sunday afternoon, a few hundred fans erupt into cheers as players for the Charlotte Crown take the floor, their sneakers squeaking on hardwood in celebration, stopping to high-five supporters waiting courtside.

It’s the team’s ninth game ever and its third win. And the fans sound less like an inaugural-season crowd and more like a city making up for lost time.

“It was really exciting,” said Ava, a young fan.

“We needed a team in this area,” said Leslie Wilhelm.

It has been nearly two decades since professional women’s basketball vanished from the Queen City.

In the late ’90s and early 2000s, Charlotte was home to one of the first WNBA teams: the Charlotte Sting. The Sting had memorable wins and made it to the WNBA Finals in 2001.

“The fans were very supportive,” said Susan Shackelford, a longtime Charlotte sports journalist and sports historian. “There just becomes this sense of community. [Charlotteans] love women’s basketball.”

Shackelford says Charlotte’s appetite for women’s basketball was never really the problem. But the team had other struggles.

“The Sting went through three different ownership changes during their tenure,” Shackelford said. “The novelty of that earlier era had worn off, and it took a lot more heft from a marketing standpoint to maintain the momentum, particularly when you got a lot going on with the men’s team.”

The team disbanded in 2007.

Now, there’s the Crown, which is part of the UpShot League, a paid professional developmental women’s basketball league that has debuted in four cities across the Southeast. Charlotte was one of its inaugural teams, debuting this year.

Andrea Stinson, who played for the Sting from 1997 to 2004, says the Sting connected the city, and she sees the Crown picking up where the Sting left off.

“I was part of the foundation and now 30 years later, it is booming and growing, and I’m just walking around smiling,” Stinson said.

Stinson hopes enthusiasm for the Crown might inspire the WNBA to bring the Sting back to Charlotte.

The Charlotte Hornets are reportedly pursuing a bid to bring a WNBA team back to Charlotte. But Stinson beams at the mere possibility.

“The Charlotte Crown is going to be our way back to getting the WNBA,” Stinson said. “And I’m so looking forward to it, I cannot wait until that day.”

Former Duke Blue Devil and current Crown guard Reigan Richardson says the goal stretches beyond wins and losses.

“Our goal is to just make sure to have another professional team here,” Richardson said. “And continue to build that legacy that was once here before.”

Barbie Sanders-Page remembers cheering on the Sting as a fan, and says she hopes her children feel the same spirit cheering on the Crown.

“My daughter, she’s 5 years old, and she told me the other day that she wants to become a basketball player,” Sanders-Page said.

Crown fan Khya Kimbler came to the game with her daughter in tow.

“I’m happy that the team is here, and hopefully the Sting will come back as well,” Kimbler said.

Standing on the court after the game, Crown coach and former Sting player Trisha Stafford-Odom says she feels the weight of Charlotte’s basketball history, and it makes her stand taller.

“Rich pride and history,” Stafford-Odom said. ”And there is enough room in the Charlotte area for women’s basketball.”