When the Seattle SuperSonics left the Pacific Northwest in 2008, the NBA franchise’s sister team, the Seattle Storm, nearly went with them to the Oklahoma dustbowl. But thankfully for basketball fans in the Emerald City, a group of local women stepped in and bought the team, keeping it in town.
Today, the Storm are one of the most successful WNBA franchises, boasting four championships and a roster of legends who have worn the green and gold jersey, from Sue Bird to Breanna Stewart to Jewell Loyd. But the team’s standout – and progressive – history would never have happened if it hadn’t been for Force 10 Hoops, the Storm’s ownership group.
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At the center of Force 10 Hoops is Dawn Trudeau. A co-owner of the Storm, Trudeau fell in love with basketball years ago when she moved to Seattle to work for Microsoft. Her then-husband took her to a Sonics game. “I thought, Wow, this is something!” Trudeau tells the Guardian. “Manute Bol was playing that night – I’d never seen anybody like that before.”
But to understand what that takes to win, we wanted to get into what it means to be a team owner on a more granular level. So, we asked Trudeau what a typical 24 hours is like for her on a gameday – in this instance a preseason game between the Storm and one of the WNBA’s newest expansion teams (and Seattle’s newest rival), the Portland Fire.
Rise and shine
On gamedays, Trudeau says her alarm goes off bright and early at 6.30am. Then she finds her phone to check the news. “I usually look at the New York Times headlines,” she says. “So that I know what’s going on that day.”
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After that, she exercises. Trudeau says she doesn’t let herself leave her bedroom without doing some physical therapy for her neck and lower back. “I get great help from my cats,” she says, with a laugh. “A lot of the exercises are on the floor, right there with them. Oftentimes they’re in my way, but it’s part of our mutual morning routine between the three of us.”
For those scoring at home, her two cats are named Stewie and Jewell. Trudeau says she got the felines as kittens when the former Storm All-Stars [Stewart and Loyd] were still on the team.
When Trudeau isn’t at Climate Pledge Arena (or with the team on road trips, which she’ll join a few times a year) to see the Storm, she likes to garden on her deck while listening to NPR. “That’s my calming thing,” she says. “One area on the deck I call my jungle. There are so many lilies planted out there, it’s hard to walk around when they’re in-bloom.”
When she’s not at a Storm game or working on her green thumb, Trudeau sits on a number of boards in the city, including one for the Pacific Science Center. The interactive museum stands adjacent to Seattle Center, which is also home to Climate Pledge Arena.
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Trudeau says she appreciates the center’s mission of education and welcoming all families, even if they can’t pay for a membership.
“Seattle Center for us is like Central Park in New York,” Trudeau says. “The Science Center is an organization committed to giving access to people. Any family can say they want a membership and even if they can’t afford it, we’ll give it to them for free.”
Midday
After she’s woken up, worked out and fed her cats, Trudeau makes a cup of coffee.
“It has to be in a Storm mug,” she says. That theme continues on gameday. Trudeau then rummages through her three packed drawers of Storm T-shirts to find the right one for the occasion. “I’m a merch person!” she admits.
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She also has a “lucky” necklace that she wears some days – a piece of jade, nothing fancy. But the year the Storm won their first ring under Force 10’s leadership in 2010, Trudeau wore the jewellery to each and every game. “Turns out if I wear the necklace, we can lose, too,” she says with a laugh.
After seeing the 7ft 7in Bol play against her home-town Sonics, Trudeau was hooked. So, when the Storm came to the city in 2000 (eight years before she and Force 10 bought the team), Trudeau bought four season tickets. “Part of my mission in life is gender equity,” she says. “When the Storm came to Seattle, I got tickets on day one.”
Today as a co-owner, she still has those season tickets. She likes to give them away to friends and often she’ll meet them for lunch or an early dinner prior to tipoff.
She’ll leave her Queen Anne condo, which is about a 15-minute walk to Climate Pledge Arena, where the Storm play, and she’ll share a meal with loved ones. One of the spots she likes to visit is Uptown China (she and the proprietor have bonded over being female business owners, she says).
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She gets to the arena around 6.30pm, 12 hours from when she first opened her eyes. “I like to walk around and get a vibe,” Trudeau says. “I like to walk by the team shop and see how many people are there and what they’re looking at. I also go by the concession stands – I just like to know what’s happening in the arena.”
After that, she may head down to the court to see if any of the players are getting early shots up – free-throws, that sort of thing. Not to give any advice, of course. But just to watch out of pure enjoyment.
This season, Trudeau understands the Storm, who are rebuilding for the future, are probably not going to be a championship contender – they currently sit bottom of the Western Conference. They have many young players, including standout rookie Flau’jae Johnson and imposing 6ft 6in center Dominique Malonga. But while there’s “less pressure” this season, there is also a lot of potential for growth. “We are just beside ourselves with excitement to have such great young talent,” Trudeau says.
Trudeau says she is a hands-off owner when it comes to transactions, leaving it to the experts.
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“You have to believe in your staff,” Trudeau says. “You have to believe in the people in charge of making those decisions. They know more than you do. Even though I’m paying close attention, I don’t necessarily have the skills of a GM.”
In other words, she says, if you’re trying to tell your staff what to do, you either have the wrong staff or you’re not giving them the best opportunity to succeed. “You can have opinions, but they’re just that,” the team co-owner says. “They’re perfectly free to ignore them.”
Game time
Though tonight is a preseason contest, it is also Seattle’s first home game of the new year. It is a chance to make sure clocks, scoring tables and the like function properly. Trudeau says she anticipates a “friendly rivalry” between the Storm and Fire in the coming years.
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“It will be interesting to see how Portland is,” she says. “With an expansion team, you know almost nothing about them. This group of players has never played together before. And with us having a young team, it will interesting to see how we show up against them.”
The home crowd, which includes former Sonic Detlef Schrempf, is in full effect, cheering along with the Storm, thrilled for the new W year. Also present is Sue Bird, who won four titles with the Storm as a player. She is now part of the team’s ownership group.
“Since we bought the team 18 years ago,” Trudeau says, “we’ve wanted to create more opportunities for women, and particularly for our league and players. The vision that we had when we bought the team was trying to create better opportunities and a better lifestyle for players to be fully professional – that’s what we always wanted.”
Before any game, Trudeau says she and the other co-owners stay away from the players and coaches. “They’re focused on the game,” she says. “You don’t want to do anything to distract them from the plan.”
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It’s only after the game that they’ll head down to the locker room and give praise where it’s due. “Typically,” Trudeau says, “we won’t make a comment unless someone had a great game. Or maybe if there is a health issue, you’ll see how they are. You’re just trying to make a human connection.”
