CHICAGO — Girls wearing red, black and white basketball jerseys filed into the front row of seats at the baseline at Wintrust Arena last week. The jerseys read “Kia Nurse Elite,” and warming up in front of them was WNBA veteran and Chicago Sky guard Kia Nurse, the namesake and patron of their Canadian high-performance summer team. Just as she ran off the court to head to the locker room, Nurse yelled, “OK, high fives!” and slapped the hands of everyone on her team.
These are the kind of interactions that can happen on camp days, a longtime WNBA staple. Games are held during the weekday, with start times around 11 a.m., and the stands are filled with kids from youth basketball teams and day camps around the area. Not every team hosts camp days, while some have held multiple per season. This game against the Atlanta Dream was on July 16, just before the All-Star break, as well as a Nike tournament for girls basketball in Chicago.
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The atmosphere is loud and fun. While there are lots of things the WNBA needs to change about the season schedule as the league grows and expands, camp days should not be on the chopping block. There’s nothing like the exuberance of these games, with kids getting excited about basketball as well as the gameday experience, including scoreboard games encouraging them to dance like a hot-air inflatable, or choose the song they want to hear in full later in the game. (The kids chose Chappell Roan’s “HOT TO GO.”)
The major hallmark of camp days is that the kids can get really, really loud.
“At one point they were screaming, and then the announcers said ‘Louder!’, and I was like, I didn’t know they could get louder. They did!” Dream forward Brionna Jones said. “But you definitely feel that energy when you’re playing in front of kids, because you know they’re out there having fun, it makes you want to go out there.”
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The noise means the players have to be creative in how they communicate with each other on the court.
“We know it’s gonna be really, really loud, so as far as the game goes, just trying to communicate as well as possible so we can actually hear what’s going on. But we love that kind of energy that the kids bring,” Atlanta guard Maya Caldwell said.
The idea behind camp days is that it will create young WNBA fans, but it’s not easy on the players. The Sky’s Michaela Onyenwere likes to get to the arena early to go through her pregame routine. With the 11 a.m. tipoff, her alarm clock went off at 6:15 a.m. to give her enough time to get to Wintrust and prepare for the game. Her teammate Rachel Banham admits she is not a morning person, but they both see the importance of the games.
“I think it’s really fun for the kids to be able to come out and see us. It’s always really, really loud. You can’t hear anything, so it’s definitely an adjustment, but I think it’s cool that kids are able to get out here and see us,” she said.
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According to Front Office Sports, multiple WNBA team presidents believe the games are still valuable, and cite feedback from fans whose interest began from a camp day game.
The game ended up being a blowout win for Atlanta, with the Dream winning 86-49 over the Sky. It was the kind of win that set the Dream up well heading into the second half of the season, and the kind of loss the Sky just want to forget about. Jones had 14 points and 9 rebounds, and was named to the All-Star Game the next day as an injury replacement.
Perhaps somewhere among those screaming kids, there was a young girl watching how Jones grabbed those rebounds, how she went hard in the paint, and found a role model. The camp games are a little different for the players, and ask more of them, but they get the point: maybe that young fan will play in a WNBA camp day 20 years from now.
