As the Minnesota Lynx returned home from Atlanta after winning the 2011 WNBA championship, hundreds of fans greeted the team at the airport. The following day, the Lynx were honored on the field at a Minnesota Vikings game. Days later, the franchise held its first championship parade to commemorate the team’s first title.
Cheryl Reeve, Minnesota’s longtime coach and president of basketball operations, wasn’t sure what to expect when she got on the parade route. Parades, for WNBA champions, “were unheard of,” she said. She was worried: Was anybody going to be there?
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However, an estimated 15,000 fans showed up to shower the Lynx with praise as they moved through downtown. Reeve, reflecting on the celebration with four WNBA Minnesota championships now on her résumé, can still hear the crowds.
“We turned that corner, and when I saw the people, I said, ‘Holy sh–. Boy, have we come a long way.’ But it speaks to the community. That’s when I really started to kind of go, ‘Ok, this is a cool community.’ ”
That community Reeve is referring to is one of the most loyal in women’s sports.
On Tuesday, The Athletic unveiled its rankings of the 10 best women’s sports cities in the U.S. Minneapolis/St. Paul ranked No. 2, with the perennial contender Lynx among a loaded group of professional and collegiate teams.
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The area also features the Minnesota Golden Gophers, who have won six women’s hockey national championships. The PWHL’s Frost and USL W-League Aurora pull in crowds. The LOVB recently announced that Minneapolis was being awarded an expansion professional volleyball franchise.
The Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota has also produced numerous seminal research studies, with the stated mission to “accelerate change for girls and women in sport.”
As part of the exploration into the cities featured on the list, The Athletic chatted with Reeve about what it has been like watching Minneapolis women’s sports fandom grow, the synergy between the area’s teams and what it’s like coaching in front of the fanbase.
(This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)
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The Lynx hired you in April 2009, after you had already coached for more than two decades as an assistant or head coach at the collegiate and WNBA levels. What were your first impressions of the Minneapolis/St. Paul fan base, and what was it like coaching in the area?
Even before I got to Minneapolis, the fan interest was palpable. When I was here as a visitor, playing against the team, they always had a sort of rabid fan base that was very, very interested. But we needed to get more. We needed to kind of grow that.
One thing (former University of Minnesota and Minnesota Lynx star) Lindsay Whalen told me when we traded for her in 2010, she said, ‘Coach, win and they’ll come.’ She was right. Obviously, she also experienced it with the Final Four run with her and Janel McCarville.
The 2004 Final Four run for the Golden Gophers is historic and still is the school’s only national semifinal appearance. Speaking of the university, what role do you see it playing in the region’s continued interest in women’s sports?
The University of Minnesota has long been committed to women’s sports. They have a legendary administrator (Chris Voelz). They’ve got the Tucker Center, which has been a tremendous resource to me to arm me with information. It’s not the case in all professional sports towns that you have the university as well as pro sports. Sometimes, the university would really take a back seat. The U does not. Title IX is something they’ve always been committed to, and their facilities too. So that was always apparent to me.
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Would you go to their sporting events as well?
I went to all the sports, whether they were professional sports or University of Minnesota sports. Obviously, I went to basketball games, been to hockey games. It’s the thing to do. We’re all partnered, which I think is really, really special. It’s part of the fabric of the community. It’s not a thing where you talk about supporting something. It’s not a campaign. It’s just done, right?
It’s a natural thing for this community. Did I know that when I moved here? No. I knew there was a university that was very committed. But it’s commonplace for people to talk about their understanding and knowledge and going to games.
Why do you think tons of PR campaigns aren’t needed in Minneapolis to rally support?
I think there’s a couple things. I think you can look at administrators. There were separate athletic departments at the university. There was a women’s leader and there was a men’s leader, and I think having done that so many years ago laid the foundation. When you separate out, as they did with the athletic department, you’re getting your full undivided attention in someone championing that.
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We talk about paving the way and being pioneers; that was a big, big part. But you also have to have a community that’s willing to be interested. There’s no judgment; there is an open-mindedness. There’s not a label that’s it’s women’s sports.
How did you see interest change over time after you started with the Lynx? Did you notice differences in support when comparing the 2011 title and the 2017 Lynx title?
No question about it. The 2011 one kind of caught people by surprise, right? And we didn’t have everyone that was gonna become a part of the journey yet. I came from the depths of the WNBA, if you will, from not being wanted and ceasing operations in Detroit, so fast forward to 2011, win a championship, and we’re going to do a parade.
And I remember boarding the bus and there’s things I didn’t say, but there were things that I was really, really worried about. Was anybody going to be there? I’ve only ever been to a small celebration after winning in Detroit. We’re having a parade? For how many blocks?
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But I remember turning up, I think it was Hennepin Avenue, and it was our staging area, and I was looking at (team president) Carly Knox and was, like, ‘Carly, is there anybody here? Did anybody check?’ I didn’t want our players to experience something awful.
And I assume things only grew from there?
So from 2011 through 2017, there was an increase in fandom, awareness, all the things. Putting the Lynx in the same spaces as the others in the city. We didn’t have to do it. They were doing it for us. We were able to get a lot of those fans that were maybe college sports fans to support us.
I remember winning the championship in 2015 at home really changed things. Whalen and I said that we would previously go to the community, and they knew who Lindsay is when she goes to the grocery store or to Starbucks or whatever, and I would get similar recognition. But when we won in 2015 at home that went to a whole other level.
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Fast forward to today, there’s not a time that I leave my house that I don’t run into somebody. I’m walking down the street, or if I’m driving, somebody’s on the corner and they see me, they’ll yell out, ‘Go Lynx.’ It is incredible.
It seems that synergy between teams in the city is important.
It’s not a competition. The Timberwolves support the Twins and obviously us. And for us, the Twins are always supporters of the Lynx. We share a lot of the seasons together, and so we actually partner and say, ‘OK, how can we set out a best game time?’ Because their fan base would be affected if there are conflicts, our fan base could be affected. We all root for each other. Synergy is a good word.
What about the support over the last two years?
Unprecedented.
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Because I’ve been through so many years here, 16 years here, the dynasty team, the nature of Hall of Famers, one of which was Maya Moore. This team, the connection that they feel to the city is super, super special. I can’t sit here and tell you that I knew it.
But by the time we got to the end of 2024, I had so many people telling me, when I went to get my blowout for the game for my hair, wherever I went, the narrative was the same: different people from different segments of the community saying how much joy the team was bringing to them.
They would recount stories of watch parties all over town. You might see that for the NFL. But we experience that, and now, people, restaurant owners, bar owners, have things named after the players and all those really special things.
And that support has come even with two gutting season-ending losses?
We had a celebration at the end of our season this year. That’s not something we’ve ever done before. And we did it because when your season ends on the road, it’s really gut-wrenching for the fans, and for the people that really care about you.
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As much as it sounds like a loser parade, it wasn’t about that. It was about recognizing the community and how they felt about our team. It wasn’t for the players. It was for the fans. I haven’t experienced anything like that before. They wanted another chance to celebrate with us.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Minnesota Lynx, WNBA, Sports Business
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