Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Sabrina Ionescu are among the players who will get a chance to play one more game in their college arenas as WNBA teams return to campuses for preseason contests.
It's a trend, started by the Las Vegas Aces last season when they played at South Carolina in a return for A'ja Wilson to her alma mater. It gives WNBA teams a chance to capitalize on the popularity of players and they hope it also brings new fans to the league.
Reese will headline the Chicago Sky’s trip to LSU on Friday to face the Brazilian national team and then on Sunday Clark will lead the Indiana Fever to Iowa for an exhibition game against the same Brazilian squad.
“I’m really excited,” Clark said. “It should be fun. I can’t believe it’s already here. I honestly haven’t been back to Iowa City a ton since I left a year ago now -- only been back once for a football game and once for the jersey retirement. But it will be fun to get back there, see some of my former teammates, my friends that are there."
Both the Fever and Sky games will be on national television. The WNBA will be showing all 15 of its preseason games either on national television or league pass.
Clark did have one concern about the trip to Iowa; the basketball arena doesn't have air conditioning.
“A lot of my family will be coming, so I know they’re excited. I warned everybody, I’m like there’s not air conditioning in Carver-Hawkeye (Arena), usually don’t play basketball games there in May, so hopefully it stays a little cool in there,” she said, laughing.
A trio of former Notre Dame standouts will take the court in South Bend, Indiana, on Friday when the Dallas Wings open the preseason against Wilson and the Aces. WNBA All-Stars Jewell Loyd and Jackie Young both starred for the Irish while Wings standout Arike Ogunbowale also excelled there.
Ogunbowale, who was the second-leading scorer in the WNBA last year, hit two of the most historic shots in NCAA Tournament history to lift Notre Dame to the national championship in 2018.
The opener will also mark the debut of No. 1 pick Paige Bueckers for the Wings.
Ionescu and the New York Liberty will close out the preseason schedule on May 12 when the team goes to Oregon to play at her alma mater against the Japanese team — the Toyota Antelopes.
The NCAA’s career triple-double leader never got a chance to say goodbye to the school or the fans because the coronavirus pandemic wiped out the NCAA Tournament her senior season in 2020.
“I don’t really know how I’m going to feel, especially suiting up and stepping on that court again. I might get emotional, just knowing that I finally get to say goodbye to that chapter of my life and get a little bit of the closure that I never got.”
Some storylines to watch as the preseason tips off:
Washington rookie Georgia Amoore suffered an injury to her right ACL in practice on Tuesday and is sidelined indefinitely. The No. 6 pick in the draft averaged 19.6 points for Kentucky last season and was expected to help the franchise rebuild this year along with fellow rookies Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen, who were selected third and fourth last month. The Mystics also announced that second-year forward Aaliyah Edwards is out with a lower back contusion and will be re-evaluated in two weeks.
Eight of the 13 WNBA teams will have new head coaches this season.
Atlanta and Los Angeles turned to college coaches Karl Smesko and Lynne Roberts, respectively. Indiana brought back former coach and player Stephanie White to lead the Fever. White had been in charge of the Connecticut Sun, who replaced her with former Belgium national team coach Rachid Meziane.
Chicago, Dallas and Washington turned to former WNBA assistant coaches Tyler Marsh, Chris Koclanes and Sydney Johnson, respectively. Golden State also brought in a former assistant coach, Natalie Nakase, to be the first head coach in the expansion franchise’s history.
AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball
FILE - Rose's Angel Reese (5) waits for to shoot free throw shots during the Unrivaled 3 on 3 inaugural basketball game, Friday, Jan. 17, 2025, in Medley, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier, File)
FILE = Former Iowa guard and current Indiana Fever WNBA player Caitlin Clark speaks during a news conference before an NCAA college basketball game between Iowa and USC, Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025, in Iowa City, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
