Griffins ahead of their time in pro sports
While there is still a struggle for respect, many walls have recently tumbled down
Diane Nelson's Vancouver Griffins aspirations came two decades too soon.
On Jan. 16, 1998, Nelson watched Team Canada edge the arch nemesis Americans 2-1 at GM Place as a part of an announced crowd of 14,944 — then the largest to attend a women's hockey game — and it motivated the lifelong athlete and sports fan to try to bring a pro women's team to town.
A West Vancouver elementary school principal at the time, Nelson had everything in place by the 2000-01 season. The team was called the Griffins. They had Queen's Park Arena in New Westminster as a home base and they would eventually land a marquee player in American star Cammi Granato.
After three seasons, they'd be gone. The Griffins fading away from the old National Women's Hockey League didn't cause much of a stir, with hardly a mention of it in the media. Nelson, one can assume, lost a tidy sum of money in the endeavour.
The odds would be more in her favour now. It's easy to assume that, considering all that's been happening for women's sports and women in sport. Look at what we've witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic alone.
Major League Baseball became the first of the big four North American pro sports leagues to have a female general manager after the Miami Marlins named Kim Ng to that post earlier this month. The NBA looks like it will be the first to have a female head coach, considering all the speculation the past few months about how San Antonio Spurs assistant Becky Hammon is closing in on getting to run her own bench.
Just this week the Chicago Blackhawks named Kendall Coyne Schofield a player development coach, adding her to an NHL player personnel department ranks that already includes Hayley Wickenheiser (Toronto Maple Leafs assistant director of player development) and the aforementioned Granato (Seattle Kraken scout).
American businessmen Jon Patricof and Jonathan Soros ran a women's softball league in a bubble in Rosemont, Ill., for five weeks in August and September under the Athletes Unlimited banner and plan to have softball, field lacrosse and volleyball leagues next year.
Closer to home, you have Sportsnet 650 teaming Caroline Frolic, Lina Setaghian and Lindsey Horsting to host their own show called OT and the traction that Canucks fans Georgia Twiss, Sam Chang, Vanessa Jang, Danielle Huntley and Mallory Mcfall are getting with their Broadscast podcast.
Women's sports still struggle for coverage, including in this newspaper. And women talking sports on Twitter take a disproportionate amount of flak. But there is progress being made.
“Some say I was ahead of my time in 1998 with stakeholders at every level not willing or ready to work together to create this amazing opportunity for our elite worldclass female hockey players, the fans and for all the young females developing in this sport,” said Nelson. “While I do not for one minute feel the road would be without its challenges today, what I do know is that I feel l may have had a little more success due to all the great collective work that has been done since 2003 when I could no longer fight the fight alone.”
This isn't merely a sport phenomena. This is all facets of life. There's no better evidence of that than U.S. vice-president elect Kamala Harris. You might have heard about her making history.
Nelson believes most people are becoming more willing to go away from “what they're familiar with,” and focus on “the best credentials for the job.”
With that in mind, check out Ng's resume: 13 years as an assistant general manager with the New York Yankees and then Los Angeles Dodgers, followed by nine years with the MLB head office as a senior vice-president. That's what she has already accomplished. You can argue that Ng getting this job with the Marlins is long overdue. Ng (pronounced Ang) had interviewed for GM posts previously, including with the Seattle Mariners in 2008.
“I think we've come a long way,” said Nelson, who's a director of instruction for the West Vancouver school district these days, with her duties including heading up their various sports academies. “But we have to continue this quest for all equality.”
If a women's hockey league was to return to Vancouver, it would undoubtedly be through the Professional Women's Hockey Players' Association. Roughly 180 players, highlighted by the top talents from the Canadian and American national teams, formed the PWHPA after the Canadian Women's Hockey League (a successor to the Griffins' NWHL) folded in 2019.
Those players aim to be in a league with staying power and one where they can be full-time athletes, making a livable wage while also having training and medical support, according to PWHPA operations consultant Jayna Hefford.
“Nobody expects to make millions,” said Hefford, a former Canadian national team stalwart.
The PWHPA played a series of showcase tournaments and exhibition games in 2019-20 and plans to play more in 2021, and they've shown enough so far to attract notable sponsors. Sonnet, the digital home and auto insurance company, made a “significant six-figure commitment,” according to a Canadian Press report, earlier this week and they'll be naming a sponsor for the PWHPA team based out Toronto. There are teams based out of Calgary, Montreal, Minneapolis and Hudson, N.H., as well, with 25 players per roster.
The Sonnet deal follows a $1-million Secret deodorant sponsorship announcement last month and both Canadian Tire and Tim Hortons are among those on board.
“We've got some big companies who see value in what we're doing,” said Hefford. “I'm definitely optimistic. As for a timeline for when we have a league going, I wish I knew. I wish I could tell you that it was tomorrow.”
Athletes Unlimited has also made mention about trying to make a go of a women's hockey league at various points and, in an interview via Linkedin message, Patricof reiterated it's “absolutely a sport we have considered and we are exploring.”
I think we have come a long way. But we have to continue this quest for all equality.
Patricof, who's a former president of Major League Soccer's New York City FC, and Soros, who's the son of billionaire George Soros and a founder of a private investment firm, set out with the idea of running leagues that gave power to the athletes.
They met with various softball players, including Canadian national team outfielder Victoria Hayward, in October 2019. Hayward, a Toronto native who grew up in the U.S., is part of Athletes Unlimited softball's player executive committee, which has a say on which players to recruit for the league, rules and scoring, and even broadcast distribution.
The softball league has deals with CBS Sports and ESPN, with ESPN3.COM online streaming as the primary avenue. Langley's Danielle Lawrie, the Canadian national team right-handed pitcher, was part of the broadcast team this past season.
There are sponsorships with the likes of Nike and Geico.
According to various reports, players had a guaranteed base salary of $10,000 with the opportunity to make up to $35,000 with bonuses.
Their scoring system is unique. With softball, there are the standard games, but players also score points individually, and they receive or lose points on every play (plus-10 for a single, minus-10 if they're caught stealing, minus-10 for each earned run a pitcher allows). Players are also awarded points for being on the winning team and being picked the game's most valuable player.
The top four players in points each week became team captains the following week and the teams were redrafted.
It's fantasy sports wrapped up inside traditional sports and it forces Athletes Unlimited to promote the players rather than the teams, since that's who the fans will follow.
In that Athletes Unlimited promotion, the references are more often about “athletes,” rather than “female athletes,” and Patricof said that is intentional.
“It's our desire to create a platform that is as innovative and successful as any in sport,” he wrote in his Linkedin correspondence.
“We are really excited about the positive response from athletes, fans and partners. We have always said the most important metric of success was the players feeling positive about the experience. I knew we were working hard to make it an amazing experience for them on and off the field and really pleased they responded so well.”
Langley setter Brie King, a Canadian national team member who played at Trinity Western University, is among the volleyball players slated to start the season in Nashville in February.
It has that unique scoring system as well. There's the win and MVP points, plus individual ones (plus12 for a service ace, minus-eight for service error, plus-five for a dig).
“I'm into music, so Nashville is a dream city,” said King, who played pro last season in Germany and had offers to return to Europe. “I jumped on the player information call on Zoom, they pitched it to us and I was pretty much in right away.
“I really think there's a ton of room to grow the game of volleyball in North America. To be involved in something like this, and have Canadian kids have the chance to see it, is exciting.”
There are reasons to be excited overall for women's sport and women in sport, according to SFU athletic director Theresa Hanson.
SFU is one of 10 programs in the NCAA Division 2 Great Northwest Conference, and they're among the four there that have a female athletic director.
A Sept. 1, 2019 story in the New York Times pointed out that 68 women were hired as athletic directors or conference commissioners “across the college sports landscape,” in 2018, up from 19 in 2012.
The piece also brought to light there were only four women leading athletic departments in the 65 colleges in the nation's five wealthiest and most powerful conferences at the time. That shows there's still much work to be done.
“I don't want to be hired because I'm a female. I want to be hired because I'm the best person for the job,” said Hanson. “But we are getting a chance to make that happen. We're removing barriers.”