Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where we're turning trolling into trademarks like Angel Reese. It's Tuesday, June seventeenth, and on today's show, Big Citrus is reconvening to discuss Misha's trip to this year's athlete Ally Summit, the revolving door of WNBA players on short term contracts, and how one NWSL team's bold move has us considering the role
of women's sports and activism going forward. Plus PWHL free agency is a go a TimewARP of a schedule, and a proven formula that finally determines the gayest team in the WNBA. It's all coming up right after this welcome back slices. Here's what you need to know today. Let's start with the PWHL, where the expansion Draft is done and the free agency's signing window is now open. As of Monday, all eight teams can begin signing free agents
and making trades. Just a reminder, free agents were not eligible for selection as part of the expansion Draft, so we could see a lot of big moves or lots of players just resigning with their existing teams. Some of the biggest names to keep tabs on are Toronto's Hannah Miller and Natalie Spooner, Ottawa's Theresa Venizeva, Boston Susannah Topany, and Minnesota's Matti Rooney and Mikayla Cava.
As of this.
Recording, there are already reports from the athletics Hailey Salvian that Hannah Miller is signing with Vancouver, so it seems like we can expect some big news to report soon.
To the WNBA, there are six, count them, six.
WNBA games tonight, and wouldn't you know it, the league space to mount nicely say you can watch them, just kidding. If there's ever a time to borrow your neighbors tablet, it's tonight. There are two games at seven pm Eastern and three at eight pm Eastern, and one ten pm Eastern contest.
First the seven pm games, the.
New York Liberty will look to start a new win streak when they tip off against the eight and three Atlanta Dream, while the two and eight Connecticut Sun are traveling to the five and five Indiana Fever. Then at eight pm, the struggling Las Vegas Aces take on the ten and one Minnesota and for a third straight game, the Aces are going to be without Asia Wilson. Wilson was placed in concussion protocol last week. No word yet
when she's expected to return. Also at eight pm Eastern, the Red Hot Golden State Valkyries are traveling to the Dallas Wings, where Page Beckers is back and could have a nice little on court reunion with former Yukon teammate Caitlin Chen, who was re signed by the Balks over the weekend. Also at eight Big Citrus bragging rights are on the line with Mesha's four and seven Washington Mystics taking on my three and seven Chicago Sky.
Battle of the Struggle Squads. Let's do this, meche.
Finally, at ten pm Eastern and West Coast battle between the La Sparks and the Seattle Storm. We'll link to the full WNBA schedule in the show notes so you can drop some x's and o's to figure out your game viewing plan. The onew team not in action tonight the Phoenix Mercury. They're back in action tomorrow against the Sun and they're currently enjoying the return of some of their biggest names. Alyssa Thomas came back from injury last week,
followed by the return of Kalia Copper on Sunday. The Mercury's leading score last season, underwent a knee procedure in May, which kept her out for the first eleven games. In the mercury seventy six to seventy win over the Las Vegas Aces Sunday, Copper played eighteen minutes, recording eleven points.
Glad to see a backca and not just because you're on my fantasy roster.
A little more w news as Chicago Skystar Angel Rees turned in attempted trolling into a money making opportunity. Reese's critics have oft claimed that her rebounding numbers are buoyed by grabbing her own missus, actually leading reporter Stephen Noe to publish a report last season disproving the theory. We'll link to that story in our show notes, but as we know, folks do their own research. So the trolling has continued,
including people calling Angels rebounds me bounds. But she turned their trash talk into a trademark idea, officially filing to trademark the word mee bounds on Saturday for t shirts, sweatshirts, and hats, and she posted this video thanking the trolls for the idea.
Whoever came up with the mee bounce thing, y'all ain't that up?
Because rebounds, met mound, cree bound, keep rose brow reading.
Anything that comes off that board.
It's fine.
It's fine, and a brand sire there. Whoever came up with that. The trolling I love when I'll do it because like the ideas, be good.
We'll link to the trademark notice and the video in the show notes to softball, where we've got two AUSL games tonight with all four teams in action in Wichita, Kansas. The top ranked Bandits are taken on the number two Talons, followed by the number three Volts against the last place Blaze. We'll link to the full au schedule in the show notes. And don't forget to check and see if they're coming to a city near you. Remember this first season as a barnstorm and tour, so they might be playing in
your city. We got to take a quick break. When we come back, get out the juicer. It's time for Big Citrus.
Welcome back slices.
It's time to bring Big Citrus back together.
Producer Mish, how are you? I'm good? Happy to be back. Producer Alex feeling good.
Oh yeah, happy to be here.
I mean as good as we can be right now, which is not great, Bob, But we're here together talking and me. I want to hear about this trip you just took that looked really awesome. You went out to an athlete Ally event, and we've talked about them in a past show. Actually, they're a nonprofit LGBTQ athletic advocacy group based in the US, and they try to make athletic communities more inclusive, less discriminatory, and help athletes to advocate for the community and LGBTQ plus equality.
So I want to hear about the trip you took. I saw the.
Little photos from your plane ride, but I want to hear more.
Yes, the athlete Ally Athlete Activism Summit. This has been the highlight of my summer so far. And that is saying a lot, because I've done a lot of cool
shit this summer already. But basically, athlete Ally had the summit for student athletes for college university administration in outside of the athletic space and for coaches to come and meet in Portland, Oregon and talk about some really important topics like nil in that house versus NC DOUBLEA settlement and how that affects folks, how to help those kids that were in attendance navigate the NIL space, But also more important things like what do we do now that
trans folks are literally under attack in the NC double A space, that there are folks who aren't allowed to play anymore, folks who are getting cut from teams, folks who are seeing repercussions on their college campuses. How can we support people in the core community at large, How can we take advantage of intersectionality within different identity groups and marginalized groups, and how can folks work together to make campuses more welcoming spaces and frankly think about the future of.
Sport in a different way.
There were a lot of really important and really smart questions that were asked this weekend by kids and adults alike. And I think my biggest takeaway from my experience is that the.
Kids are the kids are gonna be all right. The kids are gonna be just fine.
But to give you an idea of what we did, we had this really cool kind of field trip vibe going on. We went to a place called Sciomania Lodge. It's actually in Washington I'd never been to Oregon or Washington, so I got to check both those off the list, and so we were in there. We had big group sessions with folks like Lesia Clarendon, who was on a panel talking about masculinity and how that's affected their journey
as an athlete. We had folks like coach Jackie j who we just had on the podcast talking about Yeah. I got to spend a lot of one time with both Jackie and Lesia and talk about, you know, the different ways they're trying to have impact and advocate for the things that they want to advocate for, and all in all, it was just it was cathartic, you know
what I mean. I think I expected going in for it to be more about the kids, and it ended up really touching my heart as well, because you know, we're all on our own journeys, and I'm on, you know, a very specific journey to me with my gender and identity and things, and I got to connect with other folks who feel that same way and had the same kind of questions and thoughts and struggles and challenges, and so all in all it was wonderful. We got to go on a hike through Skimania's trails.
Was about a two mile hike. It was gorgeous.
I don't know if either of you have ever been into the mountains in Washington, but I've just never seen anything like that.
I'm talking with the snowcaps. Yeah.
Like I actually when I was in Switzerland posted photos and someone was like, you know, it's not quite the same, but if you go to Washington, there's like areas of the United States that we underappreciate, yea for how much they have that similar beauty of the Alps.
And it really made me want to go there. So I'm jellyfish yes. From from the plane to actually being there, it was. It was remarkable. It was remarkable.
Wait to have a quick question for you, because you talked about how you really seem to learn from both the students and the people who were running the panels and the conversations. Is there a specific conversation that stands out to either a question that no one really had an answer to but really made you think, or something where someone offered up a solution that you were like, wow, I never thought about that.
Absolutely. I just mentioned that masculinity panel. It was about all the ways masculinity has affected both CIS and transigender career non binary folks in the sports space and the ways masculinity is shaped in our adolescence, how that can affect the way we move in the world and in our sport.
Are you speaking about masculinity as a quality that can be held by any gender?
Yes?
Okay, yes, absolutely, And I think that was a big root of the conversation, right, A big bullet point in there is that masculinity doesn't belong to.
Just a concept, it's just theer.
Indeed, And I think I was really touched by Lesia Clarendon's openness and willingness to be really transparent, which we expected nothing less.
Right is just that's that's what he's known for.
But I was really touched by a question an athlete named Maggie asked a non binary athlete asked, lay, how do you exist in the in between when everybody in your life wants an answer to your identity questions and you don't have one, And that is okay to you, but it's not okay to other people who want to put you in a box. How do you protect your peace and also educate folks and bring them into your world? To the level that you want them to be in
your world. And Lay was just really open and honest about the fact that even at thirty five, thirty six, however old Lay is, it's still hard, right, But there's so much power and so much creativity and so many answers we can get just from trans and gender career people who are living in that intersection.
So yeah, that really touched me.
I'm actually really interested in this too, because I think when I was growing up, there was so little conversation about gender and presentation and identity that it felt like even if you weren't unsure of your identity, I was sure I was a woman and a girl, but I was so frustrated by the expectations for girls that I often had a friend and we would literally joke about how we were like, let's start something new, called it where we can be whatever the hell we want and play sports.
We made little cards as a joke.
I think we were in like fourth grade or fifth grade, and we were like already aware of how bullshit it was that we were expected to be certain things and we weren't.
We were really funny and outgoing.
We wanted to play sports all the time, we didn't want to have to wear skirts to certain events. And it wasn't because I thought I wasn't a girl, but it was because I knew what a girl was was bullshit. And it's interesting and it will be interesting to see how kids these days either are able to truly embrace an identity that's more complicated or just be the identity that's simple and easy but feels more open and less restrictive.
Yeah. And the last thing I'll say on this point is the part of that question that really touched me that Maggie asked was that I was about to raise my hand and asked the exact same question. And this kid is this kid is twenty one? Yeah, you know what I mean, I'm damn near thirty. I know you're gonna call me a baby again. Okay, insert crying noise.
All right, but it's.
Only someone who's a couple of years away from thirty says I'm damn near something.
Meanwhile, I try to go in reverse, I'm.
Also damn near thirty.
Okay, in the opposite Yeah, all right, But it was just moments like that that really brought, you know, filled my cup and I want to give a shout out to all the folks who organize that, from Hudson who's the founder executive director, to Sydney Fellow, William and Mary Alum who had the logistics on Locke at f Ujah, Anna Bathe, doctor Anna Bath, excuse me, doctor joe Lyne, Jordan Lexton, everybody who was involved in making that such a wonderful experience.
And you got to see Jenny at the sports bra and I got to see Jenny at the sports Brau.
I had never been to those Jelly Braga y'all. You got to get their aceet a sip.
All right, Misha, someone that has ten states left on my list, of which Oregon and Washington are two. I'm very jealous of that entire weekend.
That sounds amazing.
I'm jealous as you get to do it for the first.
Time, Alex, Yeah, I want to do it over again. All right? What you got for us today?
I have been thinking a lot as we have been celebrating these players that are coming back to the WNBA. Caitlin Chen re signing with the Valkyries after getting waived earlier this season, Aery McDonald playing three games in Indiana, Hayley Jones playing four games, with the Phoenix Mercury. You know, these are players that we watched in college. We want to have success in the W and then their time in the W is cut short because of roster limits. And it actually reminded me of a question that we
got a few weeks ago from Slice Samantha Lee. She wrote, love the Show. I have a question about WNBA waving players and getting players in on two week injury international backfill contracts. Are there players who continue to practice with the team and so are in the system to fill those roles? How are they paid? Or how do you stay in shape, etc. To be ready to fill those roles if you're not playing. Is there a lower division league?
I don't know about. I so appreciated this question because it brought me back to my early days of covering the W back in twenty twenty one, and I distinctly remember I was on a press conference with Cheryl Reeve and somebody asked her, Hey, Cheryl, how does it feel to go without male practice players for a second straight year? Because at that point, the WNBA didn't have male practice players coming in. It was still COVID times, and so they wanted to just limit the amount of exposure that
players had, and she went on a little rant. I don't want to even call it a rant because it was just a Cheryl Reeve truth to power moment, and she talked about how she didn't want to have male practice players, that she wanted to have female practice players, and that people just assume that they use male practice players because men are better. It's actually because they are
not allowed to use female practice players. And it's a little bit convoluted, but essentially the reason does make sense, where the WNBA Players Association doesn't want teams stashing players as practice players and not paying them, and so.
They can from going to other teams right exactly where they might get paid.
And so it's one of those things where it makes sense. And yet I don't think that the way that it is being implemented and also the result is fair. In fact, I would argue that it is exploiting players. So Cassandra Negli of Yahoo Sports wrote a great story We'll linked to it in the show notes, and she looked at Aary McDonald's journey in the WNBA and how when she got cut earlier this season by the Sparks, she went home in her childhood bedroom and was working out with
her brother. And so the reality for these players is that when they are not playing on WNBA teams, they are paying their own way. They're trying to find free gym time, They're looking for old friends and coaches that they can work out with because they have to do it all on their own. And so then you see that Airy got paid just six four hundred dollars for three games with Indiana, and it's like the math doesn't math here. I hope that it's something that they are
considering in their current CBA negotiations. I realize that they are way bigger fish to fry here, but it feels to me like, because these roster spots are so hard to make, it almost becomes a pay to play model where only the players that are able to kind of cobble it together on the back end are able to stay in shape to get.
Those call ups.
Cassandra also interviewed the Dream General manager to ask, Hey, as a GM, how are you dealing with calling in these players? And he basically said he has two lists. One of the players that he knows our state side that could be on a flight in ten hours in order to get to tomorrow's game and then also his
additional list of players if they have more time. So anyway to answer your full question, Samantha, it's not a fair system as it works right now, and part of the reason is that WNBA rosters are capped at twelve players, which is not nearly enough to meet a team's full season long needs.
Yeah, when players get hurt instead of being able to go to a bench that should be deep enough to be able to have the players that are there every single day and have been all season get thrust into action, they sometimes need to get those hardship players also worth noting,
and I want to have her on the show. There's a woman I've been a handful of times named Fatima A and she runs the Women's Premieer Basketball Association, and she really wants to try to make this essentially a minor league system, a G league type system for the w so that there can be a concurrently playing league at a lower level that will feed players up and back the same way the glegists in the NBA. So that'll be worth keeping an eye on and seeing if
she's able to do that. We actually have so much more we can talk about when it comes to WNBA policy around a variety of things.
But thank you for clearing that up. Al.
We'll get back to you on another one in the future too, because I'm sure there's more questions coming in from slices. What I want to talk about today was something I mentioned on yesterday's show, Angel City FC responding to the immigration raids in Los Angeles. At their home
game against the North Carolina Courage on Saturday. You remember, their player's staff and management were wearing Immigrant City T shirts, and the team also handed out ten thousand of those shirts to fans and flew in one of their owners, whose pop star and actress Becky g to read a statement before the game. It was also a statement that they handed out on cards to all their supporters. It read quote, the fabric of this city is made of immigrants.
Football does not exist without immigrants. This club does not exist without immigrants. This was one of a couple different things done across the women's sports space in response to these raids. Earlier this week, the NWSL Players Association and the WNBA Players Association released a.
Joint statement about the raids.
Their statement read, in part quote, we stand with all people seeking safety dignity and opportunity. No matter where they come from or where they hope to go, every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. We know not every situation is simple, but offering compassion should never be up for debate.
End quote.
Now, neither the WNBA nor the NWSL the leagues themselves have issued a statement about the raids or supporting immigrants, but a few clubs, including that Angel City we just mentioned and then the Chicago Stars FC, have released statements and offered up links to resources. Also on the men's side, we saw in LA last weekend that fans of the MLS team LAFC made an abolish ice TFO and they unfolded in the stands before kickoff and then sat in
silence throughout the game against Sporting Kansas City. I guess there are rules that potentially could have had that TFO taken down, and it wasn't, so it sounds like at the very least LAFC was in supportive or at least
wasn't going to end their statement. Meantime, the Dodgers and other major men's pro teams in LA have been criticized for their relative silence and in action In fact, the Dodgers even told pop artist Nessa, who performed the national anthem at a Dodgers game on Saturday, that she couldn't perform it Spanish, but shout out to her because she did it anyway, and she posted it behind the scenes video of her being told that she should sing it in English and then her singing it in Spanish anyway
to rousing applause from the folks in the stands. So we'll link to her post about that situation in our show notes. And the reason I want to talk about this quickly was, first of all, massive shout out to Angel City because it takes a lot of guts and bravery in this moment, and also because it reminded me of the Minnesota Lynks a couple of years ago, who really put themselves out there as a team and as an organization in full, from coach, owner, players on down.
Several notable instances of that that you may or may not recall was back in twenty sixteen. On July ninth, the captains for the Links came out in black warm up shirts that read Change Starts with US, Justice and Accountability. That was after the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling, Filando Castile, and five Dallas police officers. In twenty twenty one, coach Cheryl Reeve was outspoken after the shooting death of Dante Wright.
She's also talked to out the rights of transgender women and nine binary athletes.
She's been out on.
Front of a number of major issues, and of course we know about Maya Moore's work to help with the wrongfully imprisoned. So the links sort of became this place in sports, this team in sports that you knew was going to step out in front of these things. And it feels like angel City, at least in this case and in their short history, have sort of established themselves
as a team that's going to do that too. And I think the biggest thing I want to say is that I just have a question about whether women's sports will still be able to have this position in terms of society and the intersection of these major issues with sport, because with new investment comes potentially more conservative owners. We're at the very least owners who don't come from or know the women's sports space the same way and might
be reticent to allow for protests and activations like this. Also, more coverage means more eyeballs from everyone, and that includes the administration. There is now more weight than ever in using women's sports as a political not just when it comes to trans inclusion, but everything. And I worry about the ability for teams to stand up understanding they will be under a microscope that's much closer to the one that men's teams are under when they want to make
statements like this. And I really hope we see these teams and these players and these coaches and these owners continue to be on the forefront of this because we saw how powerful it could be in flipping the Senate. We've seen how much of a difference it makes in sports where there's so many different people from every single race, religion, background coming together to watch and care about something, and how it gets them to discuss things they might not
otherwise talk about. And I don't know, I just I'm a little worried and I'm hopeful at the same time about what the future could look like for activism in women's sports. Yeah.
I think it's an interesting moment because this move by Immigrant City FC, also known as ahel City, is different to me in some respects from the Minnesota links in twenty sixteen, and it's one of those things that I think maybe newer fans to the w don't realize because they think, oh, the WNBA is this really progressive league, And I think there's a slight correction that's needed there. Of the WNBA is a league with very progressive players that the league has at time attempted to hold back.
And you can even point to that twenty sixteen example when initially the league fined those Minnesota players for wearing those shirts, along with players from other teams that did the same thing. Following their lead. The finds were ultimately rescinded, but it shows you that this is a league that has been led by players, and so the fact that the Angel City show up support for immigrants, as far as we know, has been led kind of by the
front office feels different to me. Of course, it has the player support as well, but I do think that it's important to note who's leading those conversations and what it means about the structures that they're operating within.
I completely agree it's worth noting, and Glenn Taylor has never stepped in or tried to stop anything that was said or done by the Links players, so while the league itself, and I think when we think of that, we think front office, commissioner, etc.
Hasn't always been in step.
There has been a belief from a lot of players that their owners will align with them or at least support them in those moments, which isn't always the case in other leagues.
So I agree with you.
But also there is more top down progressivism in women's leagues than say men's. Even where we consider the NBA a very progressive league, it's really only in relation to other leagues because the MNBA still has a majority of owners who donated to the Trump campaign and would consider themselves Republican and conservative.
Yeah, I'm gonna yes, and your yes, and sera, Yes, I do think you're right. I think the w and a lot of women's forts leagues do have owners that don't desire to step in and be in the way of you know, advocacy. But this goes back to the conversation we've had on the show before. I would love, I would love for us to get to a place where those folks who are the owners, those folks who do have the decision making power, are also the ones who are most closely aligned with the people on the
front lines of these fights. So I just want to put that out there. I know we've had discussions about when money gets into the system, into the mix, sometimes things change. Sometimes you know their concessions and compromises you have to make with people. But I want, and I really hope for women's sports and all of sports, frankly, that we get to a point where we do have people in positions of real, real, real power who are making decisions and have advocacy at the heart of those decisions.
Completely agree, and frankly, I'm torn on whether I want this administration and a whole bunch of the country to keep ignoring women's sports so that they can keep thriving in this way, or whether I don't want to wish
for them to be irrelevant in that way. But I do worry about what it means when you get in the crosshairs of Donald Trump and this administration and the literal ways that they can and have financially and otherwise restraint did their enemies, and so I understand why in this particular moment there might be some concern about just how much you want to step up and step out. But props to Angel City for being willing to take a really big first step in that way, in this
moment in their city. All Right, we got to take a break when we come back. The easiest add to Kart decision I've ever made welcome Max Slaces. We love that you're listening, but we want you to get in the game every day too. So here's our good game play of the day. I talked about those shirts Angel City handed out, Well, they are now on sale, with net proceeds going to Camino Immigration Services, an organization that
provides free and low cost immigration legal services. We'll link to both the t shirts and Camino Immigration Services in our show notes. And we always love to hear from you, so hit us up on email good game at wondermedianetwork dot com or leave us a voicemail at eight seven two two O four fifty seventy.
Don't forget to subscribe a rate and review too, y'all. It's real easy. Watch The Fruit Slice Guide.
To the Gayest teams in the WNBA, rating twenty two out of twenty two points for the gayest squads, the Phoenix Mercury and the Dallas Wings. Review The Fruit Slice Magazine, a quarterly publication featuring exclusively queer writers, artists, and creators, released a handy guide to hoops and gay Shit on their insta a few weeks ago, catching the eye of
a number of WNBA players. The guide breaks down each of the teams in the league by gayness, assigning points for openly gay players plus four, a player with a them pronouns plus one, an openly gay head coach plus two, legend points for a notable retired gay player associated with the team plus two, a gay mascot plus one, and hilariously, a half a point for Isabelle Harrison, who identifies as
straight but is dating her Liberty teammate Natasha Cloud. We'll put the link to the Instagram post in our show notes so you can see just how gay your team is. Also, be sure to peep the comments from players underneath, especially the links Alena Smith, who wrote, so sorry to disappoint, but this is me coming out publicly as straight. I am a strong ally though. Now it's your turn rate
and review. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Good game, Collia Copper, good game, athlete, ally h you stick to sports crowd, we never will. Good game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart Women's Sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You could find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by Wonder Media Network, our producers are Alex Azzie
and Misha Jones. Our executive producers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan, and Emily Rudder. Our editors are Emily Rudder, Brittany Martinez, Grace Lynch, and Gianna Palmer. Our associate producer is Lucy Jones and I'm Your Host Sarah Spain