There is nothing quite like your first time. The first sounds. The first looks. The first tastes. The first night of the Toronto Tempo in the WNBA. A memory that will never leave you.
It was Game 1 of the rest of your life. A Friday night out at the rather archaic Coca-Cola Coliseum on the grounds of the semi-archaic Canadian National Exhibition. With everybody looking at everybody. Taking in the game and the scenes. Taking photos of each other. Wearing Tempo gear. Taking shots of one smile after another. This is what sport can provide when it matters this much.
I have had a most privileged life around Toronto sports. I was at Exhibition Stadium for the first Blue Jays game in 1977. I still have the ticket and the memories. I was at the last Maple Leafs game at Maple Leaf Gardens and the team's first game a few nights later at what was then known as Air Canada Centre. I was at the last ball game the Blue Jays played at Exhibition Stadium, and the first they played at SkyDome in 1989. And I was there when Alvin Robertson, who had been in legal trouble earlier in the day, hit the first three-point shot in Raptors history — the first bucket actually — also at SkyDome, weird as that may seem now. All that is part of a personal scrapbook of the mind — both as a working journalist and as a younger fan — the places sports can take you.
This was Marina Mabrey's first regular-season game for the Tempo, first regular-season game in Toronto. She felt the jitters all day long, knowing what was to come at night. "I'm excited for everyone," said the Tempo wing. This is new for her, for her teammates, still trying to figure out who they are, where they are, what to know about their city, what to know about the past. Mabrey admitted she didn't know the words to O Canada just yet. "Give me time," she said. "I know a few. Give me till June." She didn't know the name of the mayor, which may be to her credit, and didn't know the name of the prime minister either. She was aware that RJ Barrett was Canadian and played for the Raptors, was completely aware that teammate Kia Nurse is Canadian, and when she was told Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was from around here, she smiled and said: "I voted him for MVP." She did promise to learn more about Canada, about Canadian basketball, about playing for a country instead of a city, as time moves on.
This was a night for the sporting celebrities to put in an appearance. Big names. Medium names. Smaller names. No one got the applause Christine Sinclair received. Andre DeGrasse got a nice hand. Masai Ujiri got a nice hand. Larry Tanenbaum got a nice hand. The rest, mostly pleasant kind of claps. This was a big night for so many, and certainly for Maria Conde, the Spanish import who just arrived on the Tempo scene the other day. She has been considered the best player not playing in the WNBA for some time now. There was a certain excitement to being here, this night, to feeling this, to realizing that this is a new beginning for an old league in a place it never really has been before.
Women's sports is in a place it never has been before. It is growing in ways and places no one ever thought possible. The WNBA likes to say this isn't a moment in time, it's a movement. Toronto has a pro women's basketball team. It has a pro women's hockey team. It has a pro women's soccer team. And not very long ago it didn't have any of those. The salaries being paid in the WNBA, after the recent collective bargaining agreement was signed, after the recent television deals south of the border were signed, is now paying women's basketball players more money than ever before. This was the first appearance for Conde, away from her family in Spain, who stayed up until 1:30 in the morning to watch her play. "This is an awesome feeling," said. "This is an amazing thing to be part of."
And really, this is just the start. We didn't know much about the Blue Jays when they played their first game in 1977. We didn't know much about the Raptors when they played their first game in 1995. Expansion teams are like this. It takes a while to grow with any team, to learn their names, their tendencies, to decide who you like and who you don't. Friday night at Coca-Cola Coliseum was a touch like a blind date. You know you're out, you know you're at something: You're just not certain how you feel about it. Except there was a certain excitement to it all. That something you can tell your kids and your friends or your family years from now. I was there on the night when the Tempo began.
Sandy Brondello is the instantly likeable coach of the Toronto team. She has been around the WNBA for about three decades, give or take a decade. She already was feeling what this night was all about, not about winning or losing necessarily, just being part of history. "This is Canada's team," she said, not completely knowing what that means. We saw what that meant with the Blue Jays last October. We saw what that meant with the Raptors in 2019. "I'm excited about this challenge. We're excited to be in Canada. We're excited about that." She, too, looks forward to knowing all the words to O Canada. "I love it," she said of the anthem. "It's pretty cool. It has a lot of beat to it." Dick Clark would have liked that on opening night for the Tempo.
