Phoenix Mercury celebrate empowerment of future women athletes

To celebrate, guard Sami Whitcomb threw out the first pitch at the Arizona Diamondbacks game on Aug. 4 for Girls in Sports Day. The team also collabor ated with local artists to paint a mural outside of PHX Arena.

The mural features All-Star Kahleah Copper and Mercury legend Diana Taurasi. The mural says, “Women who lead inspire girls to dream,” including a Jr. Mercury Legacy League athlete beside them.

“It’s super exciting, this is a great time for the W,” Mercury head coach Nate Tibbetts said on Sunday before the game. “A lot of our players, when they were young, especially our older players, didn’t have W players to look up to in the same way that they are.”

For two-time WNBA Champion DeWanna Bonner, inspiring the next generation means motivating young athletes so that one day, today’s players will be the ones watching from the stands as they take the court.

“From young girls watching and inspiring them to want to be on that court one day, we encourage them to come out,” Bonner said. “And hopefully we get to meet them, and we see the look on their faces when they do get to meet us. Just as much as we are a light for them, they are a light for us.”

Coincidentally, this weekend marked the first time a woman, Jen Pawol, umpired regular-season MLB games. Fans in the stands brought signs and facemasks to celebrate the historic achievement.

Similar to the little girls who watched those games in support, Tibbetts hopes that little girls coming to Mercury games will find that spark and motivation.

“I think it’s just so cool and to have these kind of days where hopefully, girls can come and watch a game and find a player that they look up to, a player that they can say I can be that someday, you know.”

The Mercury hope to continue to pave the way for the next generation of female athletes so that one day, they’ll find themselves where their favorite players once were.