“Put your money where your mouth is”: Las Vegas Aces stars talk pay equity ahead of 2024 season
Investments in youth girls’ sports were also among the policy priorities players shared with OUAH during a recent White House visit to celebrate the second of their back-to-back titles.
I spend my work days on Capitol Hill covering one of the least productive Congresses in American history. So, with the House wrapping up a day earlier than scheduled on Thursday and the Senate jostling over amendments to an aviation safety bill, I hightailed it to the White House to chat with players from the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, who were in town to celebrate their 2023 championship.
The Aces squad, which kicks off its defense of back-to-back titles on Tuesday against Brittney Griner and the Phoenix Mercury, is stacked with women whose reach extends far beyond basketball. But I couldn’t help but wonder how they’d spend their political capital if they were as prolific members of Congress as they are hoopers.
“Honestly, pay equity,” Aces forward Alysha Clark told Once Upon a Hill. “It would be a law that everybody doing the same job needs to be paid equally. That’s the first step.”
Two-time MVP A’ja Wilson expressed gratitude for the increased visibility of the gender pay gap, but the star forward encouraged fans and decision-makers to continue the conversation beyond a few news cycles.
“I hope that it’s not just a trend that just sounds good right now and people just want to talk about it,” Wilson, who also lists an Olympic gold medal and New York Times bestseller on her résumé, said. “I would much rather people be about it and invest and support. At the end of the day, put your money where your mouth is and really try to make those changes.”
Boys have more than one million more sports opportunities than girls. Two in five young girls are not actively participating in a sport and research shows that teenage girls are dropping out of sports at two times the rate of boys due in part to a lack of confidence, school pressure, transportation and economic barriers.
Kelsey Plum, an Aces guard and 2022 WNBA All-Star Game MVP, told OUAH she would advocate for laws to reverse that trend if she were in Congress.
“I think more programs to help girls stay in sports longer creates more leaders,” she said.
Clark, the league’s reigning Sixth Player of the Year, an award bestowed upon the league’s top reserve player, said she hopes she and her teammates can inspire young girls and women to confidently step into spaces as if they’re deserving to be there.
“Don’t be afraid to be confident in who you are and what you’re doing,” she added. “You can be whatever you want to be in life and it doesn’t just stop at the roles and the things that people put on top of you. So I hope we just inspire them in that way just to be able to dream bigger than what is in front of you.”
Vice President Kamala Harris told the Aces she admired the joy and teamwork they played with last season, which culminated in a thrilling comeback victory against the New York Liberty in Brooklyn last October.
“In addition to being champions on the court, you all are role models and leaders off the court,” she said. “You simply inspire people across our nation and around the world. Through your excellence, you show young leaders and young women leaders they can be or do anything.”
President Joe Biden acknowledged the Aces were the first team to win consecutive titles in more than 20 years.
“I kind of like that back-to-back stuff,” he said in a reference to his upcoming election where he hopes to win a second term.
The president called the 2023 banner year for women’s basketball and called on Americans to support women’s sports by purchasing tickets, watching games on TV, and encouraging brands to grow the business side through sponsorships and programming.
“It matters to girls and women, finally seeing themselves represented,” he said. “And it matters to all of America.”
Aces president Nikki Fargas compared the current groundswell of support for women’s sports to the trajectory of women in Congress: In 1992 when a then-record four women were elected to the Senate—including Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black women ever elected—in what was dubbed the “Year of the Woman.” Today, 25 women serve in the Senate, a record number serve in the House and Harris, a former senator herself, is now one heartbeat away from the presidency.
“Altering the landscape of professional sports and of American politics had both proven equally challenging. And change is slow. But three decades later, that change is real,” Fargas said. “We are not a fad. We are not a fancy. We are not a year. We are the WNBA, 28 years strong and counting.”
As the ceremony wrapped up, Wilson and Aces guard Chelsea Gray presented Biden and Harris with Aces jerseys.
“Tell her to put me in, Coach,” the 81-year-old president said to laughter and applause. “I’m ready to play.”
With the election less than six months away, the Biden campaign will lean on trusted messengers who can energize unmotivated voters. Wilson is the ideal surrogate as someone whose identities intersect with the young, Black and women voters that anchor the Democratic Party’s base—and she didn’t close the door on stumping for the Biden-Harris reelect.
“It’s very, very hard to kind of be in those spaces right now because we’re constantly on the court,” she said. “But I’m definitely open to it.”
Clark, an Aces representative for the WNBA Players Association, said the league plans to engage and educate fans about the election and voting rights.
On the court, the Aces will attempt to become the first team to three-peat since the Houston Comets—a now-defunct franchise that won the first four WNBA championships from 1997 to 2000.
And despite a star-studded rookie class featuring Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever, Cameron Brink of the Los Angeles Sparks and rivals-turned-teammates Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso of the Chicago Sky primed to take the league by storm, Las Vegas enters the season as heavy favorites.
Wilson said the keys to success will be mental toughness and a team-first mentality over personal egos.
“You have to sacrifice a lot to be just a role on this team. So I think for us, just getting out of each other’s way and understanding that it's bigger than what may be on the surface. It takes more inside of our locker room and kind of keep a steady head and go after those wins because our league is tough but it’s very fun.”
Plum added the team is focused on staying in the moment.
“There’s a lot of external pressures,” she said. “But at the end of the day, if we focus on what we can control, everything will take care of itself.”
No matter the team’s win-loss record once it’s all said and done this year, the team has already done more than enough to earn the unwavering boosterism of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.).
“I am so proud of the team. The Aces have so much support in Nevada. Cortez Masto, who attended the event with fellow Nevada Democrats Sen. Jacky Rosen and Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford, told OUAH. “We’ve just seen an explosion of women’s sports. They can draw the crowds. They’re exciting to watch and they’re talented athletes.”