By Annika Duneja
Twenty-five years ago, the Charlotte Sting, one of eight original WNBA teams, played for a league championship. Six years later, the team folded.
The city of Charlotte has since been waiting almost 20 years for a women’s basketball team to cheer for.
On May 21, 2026, when the Charlotte Crown takes the court against the Savannah Steel at Bojangles Coliseum for their first home game, the wait will be over.
Alexis Lee, a Charlotte native, said she’s already planning to go with her mom to opening night. She, too, has been looking for a women’s team to support.
“I think as far as teams go, that’s the one thing that we’re missing,” she said. “If you were a women’s sports fan, you kind of just don’t have that opportunity unless you go to a UNC Charlotte women’s game.”
That’s where the Crown comes in, who along with three other inaugural teams, including the Greensboro Groove, Jacksonville Waves and Savannah Steel, make up the new Upshot League.
An “opportunity league”
At a time when the Unrivaled League, a 3-on-3 women’s league, just set a regular-season record for attendance at a women’s professional basketball game, and the WNBA announced plans last year to expand to 18 teams by 2030, it’s clear the sport’s only direction is up.
But even with the growth, there are only so many opportunities for players in the United States, Charlotte Crown President Shawn Lynch said.
“There’s about 180 women that go on a draft board. Maybe 30 of them get drafted, and maybe 15 to 20 of them actually make the WNBA and everyone else’s career, and the dream of playing professional basketball ends at that point,” he said.
Some players who aren’t drafted choose to play abroad, and even Unrivaled has only signed established WNBA stars.
Former WNBA president Donna Orender said she and Zawyer Sports CEO Andy Kauffman wanted to create a way for more players to continue their basketball careers at home.
They specifically wanted to grow the sport to areas of the country that weren’t expected to see expansion teams anytime soon.
“If you look at the trajectory of the growth, it’s still going to take a longer time to build out,” Orender said. “And even after it’s built out, there’s always room for more. And why shouldn’t markets like Jacksonville or Savannah or Charlotte or Greensboro or Baltimore — why shouldn’t they have women’s basketball now?”
The result was what Orender, Upshot’s first commissioner, called an “opportunity league”, a place where these players can grow their skills, get paid and just keep playing the sport they love.
With four founding teams with 11-player rosters, and an expansion team in Baltimore already announced for next year, that’s 55 more jobs for women’s basketball players.
“Every Queen deserves a crown”
But even as the teams give players a chance to continue their careers, Charlotte Crown coach Trisha Stafford-Odom said Upshot isn’t just a developmental league or a minor league for the WNBA.
“It’s not like this is the fallback league and everybody gets to come,” she said. “No, no, no, there’s going to be criteria. There’s going to be standards. So you have to compete on every level and then see what’s afforded to you after you’ve done your best.”
As someone who’s coached women’s basketball at UCLA, North Carolina Central, Duke and UNC, – “I’m from California. I didn’t know any better,” – Stafford-Odom said she wants to help players and members of the organization make a name for themselves and put themselves in a position of having options for career growth.
For the team itself, the immediate goals are, of course, to win this first season. But more than that, there’s a longer-term brand to build.
“I want to be the organization that looks different, stands out in a positive way,” Stafford-Odom said. “And again, I want all of my counterparts to excel and succeed. But in this market, I think just the Crown City in general, the Queen City, my mindset is going to be that every queen deserves a crown, and everyone that’s involved with our organization, I want them to esteem themselves on a platform of royalty, meaning you work with excellence, you expect excellent results, and the wins will come, the opportunities will come, the notoriety will come.”
Pushing city limits
Back in her playing days with the WNBA, Stafford-Odom said she recalls the enthusiasm of fans in Charlotte and their support for the women’s team.
“I remember being in training camp or coming to try out for the Charlotte Sting of the WNBA, and I remember the intensity of the fans,” she said. “I got cut from the team, but I remember the success that the team had, and then the disappointment when it folded. Like people are thirsty and waiting, it’s just the climate of our country. People want new loves. People want to fall in love with something that will be sustainable.”
With the Crown, Lynch hopes to take advantage of that void, and built a team culture that lasts.
“You’re at the, probably the crux of college fandom at North Carolina, right? Because [NC] State and Wake Forest and Duke and collegiate athletics is so big here,” he said. “If you walk around the city of Charlotte, there’s Georgia fans, South Carolina fans, Clemson fans, UNC fans, NC State fans. But the professional sports, I think the fandom is really up for grabs.”
He also said he wants the team to really become a part of Charlotte’s city culture by having the players integrate with the community. That means going out and teaching basketball in neighborhoods, holding camps and clinics and staying involved in the off-season.
Lee also said she’s excited to see how the team can help the city grow.
“I think also bringing some sort of steady audience to that facility also is going to be great for Charlotte,” she said. “It’ll bring more traffic to that side of town and encourage them to develop that side of town a little more. So I think it will also be really good in that regard for the people who live over there to kind of start seeing some real investment and development in that area.”
There’s also an opportunity for homegrown talent to play in Charlotte. On March 1, there will be open tryouts for athletes at Novant Fieldhouse in Greensboro to showcase their skills in front of league executives and coaching staff
“I would love it if we had girls that are drafted from North Carolina, girls that are drafted from UNC, Charlotte, here locally, or Davidson, that are great basketball players that we can tell their story, that maybe they’re not from here, but they came here for college, and then they get to the city of Charlotte, they get to play basketball, then they become a resident of Charlotte, and then grow their career from there through connections that they need in our community,” Lynch said.
In the coming months, the team will draft and announce players, with a final roster announced on May 9, and even give fans a chance to name the mascot.
The season will run from May to September, with 17 home games. Lynch says his goal is to sell out as many games as possible in Bojangles Coliseum. The first time the team plays will be an away game against the Jacksonville Waves on May 15.
“When you come, maybe you don’t remember if the Crown won or lost, but you remember who you’re with, and you remember you had a great time and that you were entertained,” he said. “And you get to meet the mascot, and you walk out with our special designed basketballs, you walk out with some merch, and you walk out proud to wear that logo around the city of Charlotte.”
Audio Piece by Logan Schaubert
