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This week, I published a feature that was two years in the making: a history of the WNBA’s Miami Sol, which existed for just three seasons from 2000-2002.

I was in high school during the franchise’s brief tenure, but I never made it to a game. As I grew up and became a WNBA writer, I sometimes grieved the opportunity to have fallen in love with a hometown team. I quietly collected Sol memorabilia to decorate my office. I regularly wear a Miami Sol t-shirt.

But I never really knew the team, never watched women’s basketball in my teenage years. I wanted to know more about what I could have loved. I started reaching out to former players and fans to see if they would speak to me about the Sol.

I was shocked how quickly many of the players said yes. I spoke to Sandy Brondello, while she was coaching the Liberty, and couldn’t believe that she’d found time in her busy schedule to talk to me about a team that no longer existed—especially when I didn’t even have an outlet behind me. Sheri Sam, now the scouting manager for the Portland Trail Blazers, also said yes. So did Vanessa Nygaard, who spoke to me from a team bus. Former WNBA president Val Ackerman also gave me her time and candor.

I realized how special this franchise had been because of how fondly its players remembered it, how willing they were to help me write my story. Since it published, a Sol-era WNBA player has shared her own reflections on what the story brought up for her about her own experience in the league. Kate Starbird was the Sol’s first pick in the expansion draft, but by the time she had gotten home from snowboarding that day, she’d already been traded by the Sol to the Utah Starzz. Starbird said that she sent my story to her friend Milena Flores, who was a Sol, and Flores said it checked out with her own experience.

“I went snowboarding on expansion draft day 2000. I was nervous, b/c I really wanted to get picked up by Seattle, & I didn’t have the heart to watch the draft (online),” Starbird, who is now a professor at the University of Washington, posted on Bluesky. “By the time I got home I’d been picked up by Miami from Sacramento, then traded to Utah. Really glad I skipped that roller coaster.”

Her entire thread is worth reading, as she shares that she has avoided talking much about her basketball career for a long time, in part because it had broken her heart a little.

This is a story about a short-lived franchise, but it’s also a story about what we lose when women’s sports are beholden to the whims of the rich men who own them. It’s a cautionary tale as the WNBA continues this newest round of expansion. As I wrote in the piece:

“It's [the story] of a franchise that fostered so many key WNBA figures within its short existence, of a fanbase that still mourns the team they lost, of a billionaire owner's unwillingness to spend a relatively little amount of money. As the league expands yet again, it's worth revisiting the Sol's demise as a cautionary tale—how the metrics of success for a women's team can be set, achieved, and disregarded anyway.”

Read it at Defector. Thanks to Samer Kalaf for believing in the story. Thanks to Samer and Brandy Jensen for the edits, and Mattie Lubchansky for the gorgeous artwork.

Below, some newspaper clippings and other gems I found while reporting.