WNBA game in Baltimore: ‘Women’s basketball prominent here’

Bre Barksdale was in seventh grade the first time she saw a WNBA team up close.

It was the summer of 2003. Barksdale and her family drove from Baltimore to New York to watch her cousin Ukari Figgs and the Houston Comets. But a city-wide blackout canceled the game, leaving the Barksdale family hunkered down in the hotel lobby — the same lobby occupied by mingling WNBA greats of the early aughts such as Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson.

“After that,” Barksdale said, “I was like, ‘Ohh, I could do this. I could see myself here.’”

So when Barksdale, an unrelenting champion for girls and women’s basketball in Baltimore, heard that the WNBA was coming to her home city, she thought the players she coaches could have their own eye-opening experience. “I think it just gives them hope,” she said.

Wednesday night, CFG Bank Arena will host the first Mystics game in Baltimore, thanks to a partnership between the Washington team and the 14,000-seat downtown venue, which completed a $250 million renovation in 2023. It’s part of a two-game series between the Indiana Fever and Washington, which normally hosts games in DC at 4,200-seat CareFirst Arena and occasionally 20,000-seat Capital One Arena.

The first game in Baltimore will go on without its headliner. Reigning WNBA Rookie of the Year and All-Star Caitlin Clark is sidelined with a left quadriceps strain, the team announced Monday. But Baltimoreans will have another chance to see one of the faces of the league in the same downtown gym on Sept. 7.

“The fact of the matter is that there is still energy and excitement to see big-time, high-profile women’s basketball in market,” said Visit Baltimore and Maryland Sports Commission President Terry Hasseltine. “It adds to the brand and image of Baltimore being a destination that can handle world-class sporting events.”

Even without Clark’s otherworldly shooting and billboard-worthy star power on the floor, this game can be for young girls in the area what the Comets once were to Barksdale, who pours every ounce of her time back into the game she loves.

Barksdale’s hoop dreams started a young age. That New York trip felt like a tipping point. She starred at Baltimore City College then played at the University of North Carolina Asheville. A nascent career that included two years as a community coach for the Atlanta Hawks’ Jr. NBA program then as youth sports director at the Atlanta Dream practice facility brought her back home with a purpose: grow grassroots girls basketball in Baltimore.

She started a summer pro-am called the Barksdale Women’s Invitational League, or BWI League for short, which offers a haven for high-level college players and fringe pros, and a nonprofit that hosts camps and clinics for girls basketball players called Girls Getting Better.

But when a young girl goes to a game like Wednesday night’s and sees professional women’s basketball players competing in her city, Barksdale wants to provide the space to fulfill those dreams.

“I think what the game was missing [in Baltimore] was a female face,” she said, thinking aloud later, “how can I be the bridge for these girls getting more opportunities?”

In many ways, Chicago Sky star Angel Reese has become that face since her star turn in college at Maryland and later LSU. In 2023, a sold-out crowd welcomed Reese and the defending national champion Tigers at Coppin State’s Physical Education Complex in Baltimore, many of them young girls. While Reese and the Sky won’t play in Baltimore this year, they are scheduled to face the Mystics on July 8 at EagleBank Arena in Fairfax, Virginia, for their annual Camp Day.

The Fever and Mystics announced the Baltimore showcase in late February. Barksdale, who has her finger on the pulse of women’s basketball in the city as much as anyone, could feel the excitement right away.

“They all want to go,” she said with a laugh.

Maybe, Barksdale said, Wednesday’s game is a catalyst for a future WNBA expansion franchise in Baltimore (the league recently announced additional teams in San Francisco, Toronto and Portland over the next two seasons, raising its total to 15). At the very least, it’s a reflection of the city’s investment in bringing high-level hoops to a city starved for more. CFG Bank Arena has hosted the CIAA Tournament each of the past three years as well as other marquee games, including an upcoming four-team event headlined by Maryland men’s basketball, but Wednesday’s game will be its first professional basketball game since the renovations were complete.

“This city bleeds basketball,” said Tamara Rogers, director for the Baltimore Cougars Legends through the Jr. NBA League. “These little girls, it’s so many up-and-coming, rising dogs. They want to see this. They want to be able to say, ‘When I get older we’ll have a WNBA team in Baltimore.’ … It gives me chills that they’re not doing it one time, they’re doing it twice.”

According to StubHub, the Baltimore games are the hottest and second-hottest ticket on Washington’s home schedule. As of Tuesday evening, $19 was the cheapest ticket on the secondary market with 174 seats still available. Mystics sales jumped 19% from a year ago, StubHub told Axios earlier this month.

“[Clark] being in town is still pretty cachet,” Hasseltine said. “I think the Caitlin Clark effect is in full effect here.”

Clark was, of course, the main attraction, but there are others worth the price of admission. Washington (2-3) boasts former Terps star Shakira Austin, 2025 No. 4 overall draft pick Kiki Iriafen, 2024 No. 6 pick Aaliyah Edwards, two-time All Star Stefanie Dolson and four-time All-Defensive Team selection Brittney Sykes, while Indiana (2-2) has former first overall pick and 2023 Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston, 2018 No. 2 pick Kelsey Mitchell and three-time champion and 2019 Defensive Player of the Year Natasha Howard.

Count Barksdale among those eager to go and, until Tuesday morning, unsure if she’d be able to.

Sitting off to the side of Henderson-Hopkins’ gym waxing about Baltimore hoops this week, she kept ignoring her phone. Barksdale was trying to be polite (and maintain her train of thought). But her phone was blowing up in her pocket. Eventually Barksdale gave in. “Wait, this is important,” she said. It was a friend with an extra ticket to Wednesday’s game. A childlike, toothy smile rippled across her face.

The orange ball has taken Barksdale to all corners of the country. She’s touched the hardwood of the WNBA’s Unrivaled League in Miami, met surefire Hall of Famer Diana Taurasi at All-Star Weekend in Phoenix and snapped selfies beside Brittney Griner.

Barksdale can trace all those experiences back to the hotel lobby in New York in 2003. The WNBA descending on Baltimore Wednesday — and again at the end of the season — has the power to create a similar watershed moment for young girls in the area.

“It plants a seed that there’s hope that a WNBA team can come here and stay here,” Barksdale said. “And it gives people hope that, ‘I can be a WNBA player.’”

Have a news tip? Contact Sam Cohn at scohn@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/samdcohn.

Mystics vs. Fever

At CFG Bank Arena

Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.

TV: NBA TV