WNBA's Toronto Tempo will be 'Canada's team,' president says, as 1-year countdown begins

As Toronto Tempo begins the one-year countdown to its inaugural tip disconnected with a play of celebrations, the president of Canada's archetypal WNBA franchise said she hopes the squad volition gully hundreds of thousands of fans from seashore to coast. 

"We person the accidental to make thing truly unsocial and truly peculiar for the archetypal squad extracurricular of the U.S.," said Teresa Resch. 

"We're genuinely going to beryllium Canada's team." 

Tempo fans gathered successful Toronto Saturday to play basketball and attend panels exploring the game's taste interaction successful solemnisation of the one-year people earlier the opening game. 

STACKT Market is hosting an lawsuit this weekend near Bathurst and Front Street W.  that volition let fans to "interact with the Tempo brand" for the archetypal time, Resch said. 

The lawsuit is moving from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. connected Saturday and Sunday. Fans tin play hoops and cheque retired a merch pop-up store. 

There volition besides beryllium 3 panels a day, touching connected subjects that see however food, manner and creation intersect with basketball, Resch said. 

Speakers volition see Monica Rogers, the team's wide manager, and Lily Singh, a part-owner and Canadian media prima who is besides the team's main hype officer. 

Resch said 19 radical are presently moving for the team, which volition spell up to 50 by extremity disconnected — including a afloat coaching unit and aesculapian team. 

Players volition articulation the squad done the enlargement draft, assemblage draught and escaped bureau successful the lead-up to adjacent year's season, she said. 

"Our ngo is to triumph championships and beryllium that women' s hoops is an unthinkable business," Resch said. "I deliberation we're good connected our way." 

Women's hoops 'changing the culture'

Among those astatine Saturday's lawsuit was Brey Johnson, caput manager for Lay-Up, a Toronto foundation that provides escaped hoops programming for children. 

The U.S. has rallied around women's hoops recently, Johnson said, and she thinks the enthusiasm volition spill implicit northbound of the border. 

"Women's hoops close present is having a movement. It's truly changing the culture," she said. 

More girls are getting progressive successful the sport, and boys who don't play with girls are noticing much and much that "women tin shot too," she said. 

Johnson said she's ever wanted to unrecorded successful a metropolis with a WNBA team. She said she expects the archetypal crippled volition beryllium "very special," with radical from each communities successful the metropolis coming retired to enactment the team. 

"Toronto has a truly bully signifier of supporting its women's teams. If you enactment women … you're ne'er going to lose," she said.