In 2018, I attended my first WNBA game.

Six years ago, I drove from my home in Boston to Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut. It was certainly one of those early “camp games” that latest fans recently got so enthusiastic about this summer that the stands full of kids at the highest of the bowl. In my lower bowl section, I squeezed past a bunch of older lesbians who were good-naturedly harsh with the judges. I’ve never had more fun at a sporting event. I felt like I had found a version of home.

I’ve never felt anything but secure, welcome and celebrated at a WNBA game – until Wednesday night. The crowd at Game 2 of the primary round matchup between the Connecticut Sun and the Indiana Fever felt different, and never in a great way.

Although I’m an experienced sportswriter, I used to be not considered a member of the press on this case. Instead, I went to the match as a fan with my partner. Upon arrival, I quickly noticed that the gang was cheering for the visiting team, Fever. Most of the people sitting around me were also Fever fans, most of them wearing Caitlin Clark’s Fever ranger outfit.

It didn’t worry me, but it surely surprised me. I heard (and wrote) about “The Caitlin Clark Effect” throughout the season, but this was the primary time I saw him in motion. As someone who has spent the higher a part of a decade attempting to tell anyone who will listen how great the WNBA is, I’m thrilled to see increasingly more people getting on board. But in a short time something began to disturb the gang.

“I felt very uncomfortable tonight.” Chanda Prescod-Weinsteina Sun fan who has been attending games since 2018 told Andscape. “It was disappointing that so many people from the area came out to support the opposing team. And on top of that, they gave our players a kind of vitriol that had racial undertones.” Prescod-Weinstein was at the sport along with her husband. They are each people of color, and Prescod-Weinstein is queer agent. As a result, “I didn’t feel safe questioning the nasty behavior of those around me,” Prescod-Weinstein said.

As the sport continued, a girl behind me said she saw Sun defender DiJonai Carrington shove Clark and have become increasingly outraged by it. Carrington then fell to the bottom and screamed, “What, did you trip on your eyelashes?”

At this point my partner asked her, “Are you going to be racist the whole game?” She huffed and puffed a bit, but calmed down. Then me he noticed a girl two sections away, getting up and dancing to the music. Her T-shirt read “No Nails” and she or he had cartoonishly long fake acrylic nails made of paper on her hands. It was clear she was mocking Carrington. There were several hats with the slogan “Make America Great Again”, including: man wearing a hat with the words “Trump 2024” written on it. and holding an indication that read: “Make Basketball Great Again #22.”

Every time the Fever scored a goal, the gang erupted, but it surely didn’t seem to be the fans were rooting for his or her team. It was like a threat. There was an ominous atmosphere within the constructing.

But it wasn’t at all times like this. “Most games are like a mini Pride event” – Kate, a Sun season ticket holder who asked that we only use her first name, she posted a video on TikTok about her experience at the sport,” Andscape said. “Last night felt like I was at a MAGA rally in Connecticut. It was furious.”

According to fans, this was something specific to the Fever audience. “We went to see the game (earlier this season) when Sky came to town and although there were a lot of Sky fans, the mood was different,” Prescod-Weinstein said. “A number of them were black women. No MAGA hats. This time there have been a number of older white people there who gave the impression to be there to hate our players slightly than simply be fans.

Both my partner and I are queer and trans. The WNBA has at all times been a league for us. In 2023, over 60% of players were African American, AND over 1 / 4 of them are openly queer. There was at the least one trans-nonbinary person this season within the league. The fandom has at all times felt prefer it reflects the demographics of the league. Thanks to this, the environment was secure for each players on the pitch and folks within the stands.

The atmosphere inside Mohegan Sun Arena on Wednesday night was the logical conclusion of the media coverage the WNBA has received this season and the league’s lack of appropriate response. With the increased audience got here greater interest, mostly from journalists and media outlets that had never covered the league. When these journalists parachute in, they don’t take with them an understanding of the culture, context and history of the game they’re covering. The result’s relationships that harm not only players but fans as well.

Coverage of the primary game between the teams on Sunday overwhelmingly focused on one play during which Carrington unintentionally poked Clark in the attention, continuing a season-long trend of coverage suggesting Clark was being targeted by the remainder of the league. Although each players claimed it was accidental, media reports emerged that Carrington – an openly gay black player – had aggressively attempted to bully Clark, a heterosexual white woman. The he led the story with header, , what the newspaper modified after it faced criticism. Sports podcaster Jason Whitlock claimed that Carrington “assaulted” ClarkESPN sportscaster Shannon Sharpe devoted a whole segment to the show, ESPN sent an in-game push notification concerning the spectacle and right-wing media I spent a day in the sector with him.

Carrington he tweeted among the threats she received, including racial slurs and rape and death threats. Is it any wonder that Clark’s fans showed up on the Mohegan Sun able to attack Carrington because the media is stoking such a fire? And is it any wonder Carrington did it? he called Fever fans the “nastiest” fans within the WNBA?

“In my 11-year career, I have never seen racist comments from Indiana Fever fans,” Sun forward Alyssa Thomas said after the sport. “We don’t want fans to humiliate us and call us racist names… It’s inappropriate and something has to be done, whether it’s them checking their fans or the league checking – there’s no time for that anymore.”

WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert got here under fire on September 9, when asked concerning the toxic fandom and racist harassment and vitriol that many players have experienced this season. Engelbert spoke concerning the need for competition in sports and emphasized that she encourages players to disregard trolls on social media. But as Wednesday’s game at Mohegan Sun Stadium showed, it isn’t nearly anonymous hate on the Internet. This is not even the primary time players have been in danger this season. June 5 someone asked the Chicago Sky players Chennedy Carter and Angel Reese outside the hotel after the sport against the Fever. Other players have commented on the impact fans’ behavior on their mental healthincluding Sky players Isabelle Harrison and Dana Evans.

“It’s not about rivalries or iconic figures driving the business model” – Terri Jackson, executive director of the Women’s National Basketball Players’ Association, – wrote within the statement after Engelbert’s remarks. “This type of toxic fandom should never be tolerated or left unchecked. It requires immediate action and, quite frankly, is long overdue.”

WNBA issued a press release after Wednesday’s game, stating that it will not tolerate “racist, derogatory or threatening comments towards players, teams and anyone associated with the league.” However, for a lot of, including some gamers, this statement is simply too little too late.

There is one other layer of such a racism that could be seen at Mohegan Sun Arena. The Sun is the one Native American-owned team within the league, an early investor in women’s basketball and plays on tribal lands. “I want people to be respectful when they come to Mohegan Arena, regardless of the team they support,” Prescod-Weinstein said. “Most of us come there as guests of Mohegan, on their land. Racism on this context has a special history and the league bears responsibility for it.

Having been at that game, I can let you know that essentially the most aggressive people in that crowd weren’t Indiana Fever fans – they were Clark fans. I didn’t see some other player’s name on a Fever jersey or jersey, and many of the Fever gear I saw clearly had Clark’s name and number on it. It’s now not enough to redirect the conversation back to basketball.

Clark was asked concerning the hate other players are feeling this season and confirmed that racism has no place within the league.

“No one in our league should have to face any form of racism, hurtful, disrespectful, hateful comments or threats of any kind,” he added. she told James Boyd about it “These will not be fans. These are trolls.

Carrington has been critical of Clark this season as she wondered how someone “cannot care that their name is used to justify racism, bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia and their intersectionality.” She encouraged Clark, who hasn’t been very outspoken about her fans, to make use of her platform for good, saying that “silence is a luxury.” Following media coverage of Game 1, Washington Mystics guard Brittney Sykes expressed similar sentiment toward X.

“Even if you don’t WANT to take responsibility…. You STILL have responsibility! Speak up,” Sykes wrote. “There is no place for s – that is shown or said to women in our league… Do not use players to hide behind their true intentions of being mean, nasty and racist.”

It’s unfair that the media and a few of her fans are forcing Clark to be an avatar of white supremacy, but she’s going to must actively fight back. If her black colleagues are affected by racism and misogyny and she or he chooses silence, she chooses to benefit from the undeniable fact that she will select to not cope with it while they can not.

As my partner and I stood in the gang for a detailed-to-last-minute qualifying match, we should always have had an excellent time. Instead, we wondered if we should always leave early, frightened that the atmosphere would turn sour at any moment. We were afraid that Fever fans would riot if their team lost, but we were equally afraid that they’d riot in the event that they won.

“Caitlin played her first WNBA game in Connecticut and I was there,” Kate said. “The atmosphere was so positive and exciting that we focused on the kids who got here from everywhere in the world to see her play. “Something modified drastically between that first game and last night. The fan base has been taken over by the adults’ parasocial obsession. The energy shift was palpable and at times terrifying, something I had never experienced while playing W.

I looked around at the gang I didn’t recognize and burst into tears. This shouldn’t be the league these players have worked so hard to create. The Sun should give you the chance to give attention to the undeniable fact that, in pursuit of their team’s first championship, they’ve just advanced to the second round of the playoffs. Instead, they’d to handle the racism and vitriol their players were subjected to easily for doing their job.

If that is what game development looks like, I promise I don’t need it.