UNSCHEDULED: WBB HEALING
Last week, my kids learned what a busy signal was. While I drove them to school, my 8-year-old held my phone, pressing the call, hang up, call, hang up… each time greeted with a tease of half of a telephone ring and then BRURNG BRURNG BRURNG. “What’s that terrible sound?”, she asked. “It’s a busy signal...” What a trip to time travel in this explanation back to the 1990s calling up Hot 99.9FM to request they play C and C Music Factory. The anticipation, the longing, the quick disappointment ughhhh to hear the busy signal, and then the quick hang up to keep trying with a giggle and “Come on!” testing luck again. It was a beautiful moment as 2025 came to an end, especially since we were in fact calling up the radio station to partake in KQED Forum’s live discussion of “One Beautiful Thing of 2025”.
We never got through, but what a lovely sign that the Bay is so passionately fighting the doom that so many people were calling to declare their joy burst that the phone lines were completely locked for the entire hour. As we pressed our redial buttons over and over laughing, we also enjoyed the genuine happiness, relief, and entertainment of the answers of others: a crossword puzzle competition, clean margins post-mastectomy, beginners taking dance classes, a dad crying pure love tears that his son drove all the way to Texas just to watch a friend graduate from the military academy. 2025 was a terrible year in so many ways, but The Bay didn’t want to hear it. We wanted to call up and let everyone know we were okay.
My answer to my woes this year and my answer to the radio station yesterday: BALLHALLA.
What is Ballhalla?
Ballhalla is the Valkyries play on the word “Vallhalla” to describe the feeling of the Chase Center during a Valkyries game. Writing this in the black out, my ten-year-old is my official source on the definition of Nordic myth of Vallhalla: “a place where, um, some people thought they would go when they died.” Like Heaven? Okay, that tracks.
With the electric back on, my internet dive tells that Vallhalla is the great hall where the Valkyries live and care for the souls of dead viking warriors. The Northern lights may be the sparkles off of their armour. According to Wikipedia, medievalist scholar Ursula Dronke wrote that the poem, “the völva”, describes "ladies of the War Lord, ready to ride, valkyries, over the earth." Amen to that. Etymologically speaking, Valkyrires has roots in the words that translate to “slain choosers”, and Vallhalla, “hall of the slain”.
Inside the Hall of the Slain
I’d say we were all a little dead inside at the beginning of 2025. A bit slain. But each time I entered Ballhalla, it was like a refill of life, all of us revitalized by the upspoken covenant to cheer together for our lavender heroes. We were in communion, relishing the pause from the cruel chaos unraveling outside, a refuge from the global rule-breaking by people in roles we were raised to trust and respect. As fans of this new team, we were inspired witnessing our Valks be true to their agreement to play by the rules, to stop when a whistle is blown to offer a moment of instant justice. With integrity, they kept their promise to give their all for the sake of others’ careers (team mates and coaches) and others’ happiness (team and fans), even if it breaks their face (Tiffany Hayes) or ACL (Kayla Thorton); even if it’s only for about $67,000 (Janell Salaun $66,079; Kate Martin $68,595; Kaytlin Chen, who played, was waived, then brought back: $49,420).
I decided to do a podcast after the first game I witnessed. My co-host Vanessa Hutchinson-Szekley and I recorded our first episode on Mothers Day. It got popular as we caught the perfect wave of fandom and rode it wherever it took us. When interviewed about the podcast, the first question was always something like, “Why/how did you start a podcast about the Valkyries?” The quick answer is that we went to the first preseason game and fell in love with the team and wanted to research each and every one of the Valkyries, and when we did, we wanted to share it with the world.
But there is more to it. It wasn’t just the superb level of play or the genius of management to form a team where everyone was important or how Coach Nakase clearly had a vision of excellence that these players already believed in. Really, for me, it was how the game was so emotionally moving that it caused 18,000 people to let down their self consciousness and scream til they were hoarse in joy together, louder and louder until the very end, and then stay after the last buzzer, everyone offering a standing ovation until the players exited the court, even after losing that first game.
Ballhalla emerges from the Bay
No one told us to do this, there were no instructions. In fact, many of us didn’t even know what a Valkyrie was and didn’t own any gear yet. That was the beauty of it. We all just opted into being cheerleaders of our new team, went to the thrift store to the purple section and used some old lavender eyeshadow that was good for nothing until that moment. We all just let down our guard together to lean into cringe and be superfans.
The creativity of the homemade costumes and multiple bootleg DIY merch makers popping up everywhere was a symptom of a new movement underway.
And it wasn’t just the fans that showed up. The Valkyries workforce showed up. Behind the scenes, the ticket service team, social media team, marketing team and one graphic designer of the of the Valkyries (Gillian Howe, please do an episode with us!) worked their booties off. The other night at Rikki’s celebration of the SF Chronicle’s Valkyries photo book, I briefly spoke with Jamie Furrer, the account manager of ticket sales for the Valkyries, and found out that she is one of a team of ten people who secured 20,000 ticket deposits for the first season. There are only about 18,000 seats and when the dust settled, this incredible work yielded 10,000 season ticket holders. And this is before it was the coolest bandwagon to jump on. We showed up because those people showed up. They did an oustanding job planning and then getting others to believe in their vision and invest in it. Their vision: Valkyries games were going to be awesome in every way possible, but not in the ways other teams had done. In Bay ways.
The institutional resistance to White hetero dominant culture was consistent, deep, and intentional. Ghanaian-American Ohemaa Nyanin is one of two Black general managers in the WNBA, and Coach Nakase is the first Asian American (Japanese) head coach in the league. Linguistic hegemony was subverted with 4 languages spoken on the team in the beginning (we miss you Vanloo!) and Valkyries management went out of its way to welcome (ie. went through the immigration process to get working visas etc for) the 7 international players.
The hiring of the entertainment was similarly sensitive to Bay sensibilities. It would have been easy to hire someone young and trending for the first game half time show ever; instead, we honored Bay Area history with legendary E-40, a pioneer in rap.
Likewise, our multigenerational dance troupe “Violet Vibes” and hype squad “The Flock” stand out in glaring contrast to what I watched in the Cowboy Cheerleaders reality show. Our Valks’ dancers describe themselves as “a powerful embodiment of the spirit, rhthym, and resilience of the Bay Area … rooted in values the matter: family, community, and authenticity… spans all ages, genders, ethnicities, and backgrounds, united by a shared passion for movement and a love for the game.”
Ballhalla is known for its crazy loud volume (fellow Valks fan and writer Eric Apricot did a piece on the decibels), which makes it hard for other teams. But this double edged Valks sword is difficult for people with sensory challenges as well. Did you know there are two sensory regulation “Wellness rooms” at Chase?
Also while many are not sober and enjoy the offerings of beer, wine, and even cocktails, there’s a station for free water for designated drivers and well hydrated non- drinkers. Something for everyone!
Even the ticket prices addressed inclusion– they were way more affordable than other events in the same venue. (The exact same seat I sat in for the Valks for $30 this summer is $100.03 for Monday’s regular season Warriors game, $155 for Cardi B in February.)
So Queer
What really moved me personally in the intentional building of Ballhalla were the embedded official queer nods: the V’s up (but hardly any people stick their tongue out), the daggers, even the color choice felt like a big gay shout out (lavender marriage, colors combined on the trans flag, a color no men’s team would ever wear). My trans buddy Lindsey Collins joked in a sarcastic whisper to another trans fan in the same official Valks lavender cardigan, “I think this is a safe space!”
The pride celebration had an outstanding dance and drag performance (as we had come to expect by that point in June), but seriously, every night felt like Pride with some straight people invited, especially with Black queer icons DJ SHellheart and DJ Lady Ryan at the helm. AriThe KPIX announcers also included out and proud Kelsi Thorud and Layshia Clarendon, who was the first out nonbinary WNBA player. It’s been a slow learning curve for the W to stop trying to market players as solely cute straight ponytails that Middle America will accept and love and accept that, as the Lesbians for Liberty stated in their activism in the early 2000s, “Lesbian fans are filling the stands.” Of course it made sense in SF, but still, the unabashed embracing of women’s basketball as a gay sport was so refreshing for my Gen X queer spirit. It felt like the biggest lesbian bar ever. And when the game was over and that wasn’t enough community for a day, Meghan Doherty-Baker started the Valqueeries, a fan group with 2,582 followers on Instagram that organizes watch parties and pride events, “Bringing queers who are Golden State Valkyries fans together for fun and community.”
Lore Leaders
Lastly, for my behind the scenes appreciation, I have to say that the fantastic crafting of the Valkyries lore was genius from the start. A real Varsity jacket for every inaugural season ticket holder. Not only did they subversively don them with a power jacket styled like only football men in the 80s had access to (or their girlfriends), as fan Nancy Corrigan commented at the SF Chronicle’s book party, but the Valkyries also ennobled them the honorable title of “The Founding Guard.” Every game started with a special guest (such as Angela Davis! and Megan Rapinoe!) banging of our giant GSV drum at the side of our amazing arena host Ari Waller leading our battle cry.
Cosplay curious and diehards took the Nordic mythology cues to wear armour, crowns, swords, lavender yarn viking beards, chains. Who would have known this battle gear would so nicely complement our fierce fight to “Pay the Players” this season. (When one lavender yarn beard got on the jumbotron, he lifted his sign that criticized the low 9% revenue share the players received in 2025. Nice DIY labor rights, Mr. Viking!)
I'm probably forgetting some facets, but my point is, the Valkyries small workforce produced something amazing. And fans doubled down. Some may scoff at the cult-like fervor of wholeheartedly creating and participating in sports fan rituals. But we needed it. So clearly there was more to Ballhalla than just good basketball and good marketing.
Ballhalla is Beyond Basketball
My dad, Eddie Mast was a pro basketball player. He taught a camp about the spiritual side of basketball at the Omega Institute in the 80s and 90s with his Knicks teammate and NBA coach Phil Jackson and writer and CBA player/coach Charley Rosen. It was called Beyond Basketball and I didn’t get to attend until my dad had already passed and they did a memorial camp for him. But upon finally getting to Omega and appreciating each step on the court as a gift, analyzing the code of respect and unspoken knowing of teammates involved in the decision making of the triangle offense, I realized my whole childhood was one big Beyond Basketball camp with a huge dollop of Catholicism spread all over it. Like my dad growing up strict Baptist or Phil Jackson growing up strict Pentecostal, the experience of deep religious ritual oozed into basketball, and as my dad said when he dropped us off for church on Sundays and left to play pick up, “My church is basketball.”
Because if you are religious, and especially when organized religion fails, in the many ways it can, you don’t, you can’t, just dissect yourself before walking on the court: if you are a person of mysticism and lover of ritual off the court, your game will be saturated with those values. And if you feel judged or excluded or rejected by a church community you once loved, basketball can become (did become for me) a receptacle for all that passion and devotion that you couldn’t find in a Church.
Ballhalla, basketball and grieving
On top of all this, I’ve found that basketball is a way to grieve. My dad died suddenly on the basketball court at a Tuesday night pick up game in 1994 at the age of 46. A few of the Valkyries I researched for the podcast had suffered a loss of a parent too soon like I had. At my “Day in the Life of a Valkyrie” the other day, I asked Coach Nakase about transitioning from playing to being a coach and where she learned her analysis of the choreography of the game, she automatically answered “My dad.” And then pointed to her head and heart. I cried later.
When my dad died, the basketball community was everpresent. Memorial tournaments paid for our school uniforms, donations put a new roof on the house. Ex-team mates stepped into uncle roles. People gawked at his funeral as ex-NBA players carried his casket. Someone told me he died talking about my jumpshot. Many told me he called me his “thoroughbred” and gushed at how much I reminded them of him: my face, my gait, my “Eddie Mast style” hook shot. My mom gave me his necklace after my final college basketball game. So not only did I come up believing in the game as a metaphor for living a good life, but when my dad’s good life was over, my grief and mourning were irreversibly entangled in basketball.
My mom grew up in a time where women could not run on the court and played in skirts. Not a lot of Baby Boomer moms got to play. So many Gen X and Millennial women learned basketball from our dads. And my experience is, and I think others is, that when you lose your first coach when he dies before you’ve learned everything he could have taught you had he lived, then basketball is completely a way to hold on to the precious teachings he did get to teach you while alive. It’s a way to keep your dad with you.
Resistance as a stage of grief
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Why isn’t resistance a stage of grief? It’s a fight that is not quite denial or bargaining, nor is it laying down to yield to the need for acceptance. It comes at the end after the other stages, or maybe during, when you’re knowing the person is gone and not coming back, but then you must punch back at all that comes with that. You have to go on refusing to give into the sadness that the reckoning with the void brings. I spent years resisting what I call “the deep dark”. What started as just wanting to be with my dad, spun into a web of other reasons to not want to exist amongst superficial teenagers enjoying their high school drama and coming home to my other loved ones in their own rigorous work on getting through the trauma. If you’ve ever had such thoughts, perhaps you can relate to the bad habit of looking for the worst in everything.
But I remember the moment I peaked my head out of the dark ditch I was stuck in. I was in the high school cafeteria and suddenly thought of myself not being the kid in the future, a flash of myself as the parent to a child. When people say they need something to hold onto, I get it. I made a treaty with myself that day and I replayed that hopeful little speck of an idea over and over. I dug into sports as part of my resistance to the deep dark. It gave my body purpose and my life purpose that I meant something to my family, teammates and my coach. It was a way of making my dad proud and keep him with me.
I’m 46 now, the same age my dad died, and my eldest child is 15, the same age I was when I lost my dad. Leading up to this year, I decided I wanted to do my best not to die young if I could help it. I got everything from genetic testing to echocardiograms to cutting down on beer to starting HRT and doing my PT and exercising. Maybe it was superstitious PTSD, but I turned what could have been a stereotypical midlife crisis into a renovated move to feeling like I’m getting younger.
So what a coincidence that basketball had a reawakening in my life this year. As Ballhalla took form and the podcast creation took over my evenings with hours of editing, I re-opened parts of my brain that I’d left dusty since college. Watching sports, especially men's sports, has been surface level entertaining in adulthood, at arms length, in passing, definitely not a priority. (Well, except when we took a generator and smart tv camping and watched the Warriors finals with a hotspot in the forest.)
But 2025 had me remembering all this basketball stuff, had me seeing myself in the upbringing of the players I was researching, more than nostalgia, more than suddenly useful knowledge hidden inside me I thought no one cared about. Like a fish in water, I had taken for granted, and perhaps resented, basketball as a major source of oxygen growing up. In Ballhalla, I could see why my dad had centered basketball as a source of happiness and shared ethos. I found a lot of joy in revisiting memories and lessons that really were from a time of intense grief (which turned out to be my whole adolescence and young adulthood). 30 years after the death of my dad, I could wholeheartedly embrace basketball as just pure joy.
But this joy in the midst of such political chaos and despair? How did that work? I spent 2025 bracing myself as a teacher worried about ICE raids, as a spouse of a federal employee worried about job security/ how we’d pay bills during the shut down, as a parent and queer person worried about how executive orders would affect my family’s basic privacy at the doctors office and kids’ sanity in adolescence, as a citizen flabbergasted that nothing made sense anymore. I felt isolated and alone worrying about my life when the world was burning for others’ so much worse.
But I was not alone, right? For most of us, the year of 2025 was a berserk blitzkrieg on simple safety, democracy, and plain decency. Rules that we honored and bought into our whole lives in the real world were not being followed. Double technical fouls on our human rights and our government were not being called. For years, we’ve all suffered through the decline of division and polarity where there are no referees to get us back on track to civility. We retreated to isolation on our phones and our selected few who understand us.
Collective resistance to the deep dark
So collectively, how do we resist the deep dark? How do we face grief? How do we move beyond acceptance that trauma happened and is still happening? I think we needed/need something beyond lonely self care, setting healthy boundaries, individual therapy, a new exercise routine. At least I did (and do). The remedy turned out to be contagious and replicated rapidly. The joy of the Ballhalla in the Bay Area was viral, and with each gorgeous mutation, new ritual and lore was born, the DnD nerds bonding with the ex-jocks, the old lesbians in matching plastic crowns next to the young straight dad proudly explaining the game to his kid, the teenage boys screaming at the refs for bad calls next to the quiet teacher with ear plugs in, studying the logic of this new game in their life like it was chess or constitutional law. Together we all relished in the growing pride and belonging, together we birthed into the world this new thing called Ballhalla (quite literally as we watched a nest waiting for our beloved mascot Vi to hatch from a giant lavender egg.)
The season is way over now and my co-host, Vanessa Hutchinson- Szekely describes the feeling as “the opposite of PTSD”. What would that be? A natural high? Afterglow? Communal therapy? Dare I say, healing?
When we all came out of our trenches post pandemic eager to be together, yet still divided by plastic walls and 6 feet, I was teaching Spanish in a mask not knowing which student was speaking. At the end of each long day, I would retreat to home, defeated that the connection to my community that I so longed for waiting for zoom to be over was further out of reach than expected. What a rude awakening that reopening was so much harder than we saw coming. It was a longer road than many of us hoped for. A road of long covid, social anxiety, depression, alcoholism, and just forgetting how to be together with strangers. Maybe it took us five years and a purple egg, but I think we should be proud we took such a big step in healing by coming together to swim in the public pool of joy together for a few hours a week.
And if I haven’t been clear, everyone is invited! You don’t need to know-know basketball or sign up to be a fanatic to enjoy Ballhalla. I grew up with Eagles fans and have seen the joy that the Birds brought my ancestors, my siblings, my niblings. They know football. It’s serious business. In Philly, when someone passes you on the street and you have any semblance of that blue green on your person, you’ll get a sincere “Go Birds!”
In the Bay, you’ll find that sense of family not only at Chase, but at watch parties (Check out Rikki’s in SF or White Horse Oakland), at No Kings protests, or on school field trips. I found it in the supermarket when I spotted “Bay Holla” on a fellow shopper wearing a sweatshirt made by Mark Shane Balagot, a superfan I just met last week who’s from the East Bay with his fan gear website aptly named ntrlhgh (natural high without the vowels). I feel Bay family vibes when someone recognizes my voice from the podcast or my face from our very local newspaper, “Hey, you’re that Valkyries podcast!” It’s not because I’m a great podcaster, it’s because we are part of something together and can smile at our connection in our love for the Valkyries. And like Eagles fans back East, it’s way more than players in certain colored uniforms playing with a ball. It’s unity and camaraderie. It’s a hopeful resistance to the deep dark. It is epic, it is mystical, it is the magical healing we didn’t know we needed. We came together in the Chase Center to form Ballhalla. But, as Rikki’s co-owner, Sarah Yergovich said in true Keeper of the Realm form, “Ballhalla isn't just one place.” It isn’t. It's all over the Bay. It's in the smile of a stranger wearing that special violet. It’s in our hearts. We are Ballhalla.
