My sports thoughts are currently consumed by one thing: the gentrification of the WNBA. 

Over the last few months, women’s basketball garnered an influx of interest as the women’s NCAA Tournament peaked at 24 million viewers, the WNBA Draft crushed last year’s TV ratings by three-fold and jerseys like Caitlin Clark’s sold out within hours of hitting the market. 

This boom in attention to the women’s game is all that I, and everyone else who has capitalized on the privilege of having women’s sports leagues to follow, have dreamed of for years. But to my surprise, I am not 100% enthused. Rather, I’ve taken the Jemele Hill stance on the phenomena: “70% of it has been exhilarating, 30% of it has been annoying.” 

Until this season, watching women’s basketball took multiple streaming subscriptions. Only a handful of reporters offered consistent coverage and, in my experience, tuning into a game in the family living room was a punishable act. These dissipating challenges served as a rite of passage into the tight community of devout women’s sports fans, and I am struggling to accept that I must now share the sport I love with people whose knowledge and understanding of women’s basketball is still developing. 

As I process my emotions, I realize what I value in women’s basketball reflects my motivation for writing this column: celebrating people who construct their own spaces for movement and sport. In this concluding installment, I will outline a few communities that I believe replicate the comradery that has always existed within women’s basketball.

Community & Unity People’s Kite Festival

There’s nothing better than throwing fabric into the sky and running around with a string. On Saturday, May 11 from 2-6 p.m., Clockshop Los Angeles will host its annual kite festival at the L.A. State Historic Park. Featuring free arts workshops, kite masters, fabric dyeing workshops and musical performances, the “Gallery in the Sky” will encourage preservation and joy on public land for generations.

Grand Park

It’s never a bad time to embrace the true essence of Southern California and enter your yoga era. Occurring every Wednesday and Friday, Gloria Molina Grand Park in downtown L.A. offers a free yoga series that welcomes participants of all experience levels. The program is an accessible venue to reconnect with the environment and disconnect from the business of this industrialized city. 

Skate Sites

Long regarded as the “birthplace of modern skateboarding”, L.A. is home to an array of distinct skateparks that each set a precedent for the evolution of the sport worldwide. From The Cove Skatepark in Santa Monica to Westchester, you can go just about anywhere in L.A. to get a taste of different skating crafts.

Queer Leagues

In a city with decent year-round weather, amateur athletic leagues have been a crux to LGBTQIA+ community building in L.A. If you’re searching for a sweaty home of your own, you can find it in just about any sport as some of L.A.’s most popular leagues include WNBAGAY, Dyke Soccer, Angel City Derby and Queer Surf. 

And with that, the cage is closed.

Leila MacKenzie is a sophomore writing about the relationship between public land and play in her column, “The Cage,” which runs every other Friday. She is also a sports editor at the Daily Trojan.