Tag Archives: Maggie Mertens

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OPINION: WNBA Troubles, Public Outrage Show Need for Investment & Growth

by Maggie Mertens

From the absurd to the terrifying, the most recent stories about the WNBA paint a dire need for change in the league. 

Thanks to reporting from Howard Megdal published in Sports Illustrated last week, we now know that New York Liberty owners Joe Wu Tsai, a billionaire cofounder of the Chinese company Alibaba, and his wife, Clara, got sick and tired of their players having to fly commercial and nearly missing games to do so — so they did something about it. 

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OPINION: Genesis Clark Is the Only Girl on the Foster High Football Team, but It’s NBD

by Maggie Mertens

Like a lot of high school football players, Genesis Clark grew up watching her brothers play while throwing the ball around on the sideline. Clark also watched her family’s favorite team, the Ohio State Buckeyes, dominate college football, and preferred television shows about football. But Clark, a Junior at Foster High School in Tukwila, hadn’t gone out for the team before this year — her mom wouldn’t let her. 

“She’s been begging me to play football for about three years,” Jenefeness Tucker, Genesis’s mother says. “I kept saying no. It’s too dangerous and she’s a girl, so I said no.” 

But after a year and a half of remote school, lockdowns, and a lack of sports altogether, Jenefeness changed her mind and decided to give her daughter an opportunity to try something new.

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OPINION: Climate Pledge Arena Will Be the Storm’s Home, Too

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As a new arena brings massive investment and support for the Seattle Kraken, the Storm is overshadowed.

by Maggie Mertens

You might think, based on the constant media coverage of Seattle’s new NHL team and the announcements carefully marketing what will soon be known as Climate Pledge Arena as “the future home of the Seattle Kraken” at seemingly every opportunity, that the renovated arena in Seattle Center will be used exclusively for the NHL team that has yet to play a single game.

In fact, a storied team will also make Climate Pledge Arena their home: the WNBA’s Seattle Storm. For the past three years I’ve followed the arena renovation news with interest because I can’t wait for the most successful sports team in Seattle history  — which continues to win, by the way  — to play in an arena worthy of their excellence. 

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