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Putting A Positive Spin On WNBA

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By MICK ELLIOTT, The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 3, 2008

TAMPA - This is her game. That's the first thing you understand talking basketball with WNBA commissioner Donna Orender. By instinct she is as nurturing and protective as a den mother.

Has there ever been a professional sports league executive more immersed in their game's most basic foundation? She is managing a league and championing a cause, a woman bent on promoting women's basketball and changing the way it is viewed by those who still don't get it.

Play hard and refit public opinion. Full-court pressure will break down the critics. Crash the boards hard enough and you will shatter the glass ceiling.

I am woman.

See me score.

"There is a lot of research that shows how young girls and women benefit from participating in sports: health, diminishing breast cancer, the rise of self-esteem, better grades in school," Orender says, her voice rising evangelistically. "That enhanced self-esteem, that ability to master the challenge, understanding how to compete, it all makes you a better corporate citizen.

"In the job market, who's going to be in the generation that's going to take our companies to the next level? A big part of it is going to be women. But I'm not going to stop at women. What I'm going to tell you is the ability to respect strong women by men and appreciate the talent they bring to the marketplace. And having young men, such as my sons, cheering for female athletes is going to make that integrated process of the genders that much smoother as the next generations rise."

Here is where Orender differs from the law-school trained commissioners ruling most every other American professional sports league. She is not reciting the corporate mission statement. Rather, she is speaking the gospel of her heart, a woman who already walked the walk before starting to talk.

Married to M.G. Orender, a former president of the PGA of America, with two 10-year-old sons, the commissioner grew up in Long Island, N.Y., a five-sport high school athlete. After graduating from Queens College in 1978 with a degree in psychology and All-America basketball honors, she was headed for graduate studies in social work when the Women's Pro Basketball League (WBL) first formed.

Under the name Donna Geils, Orender played three seasons in the WBL, where she was All-Pro and one of only 20 women to play all three seasons of the league's brief existence.

A television production career eventually ensued, followed by 17 years at the PGA Tour where she became senior vice president of strategic development. She was the original producer of "Inside the PGA." And in February 2005 she was named WNBA president, succeeding Val Ackerman.

"What she has special is undeterred energy and force in terms of getting any task done," said former Women's Sports Foundation CEO Donna Lopiano, who remembers coaching a teenaged Orender in AAU basketball before again working with her as the WNBA's leader. "The way to describe her in basketball terms is she has point-guard mentality. A dog after a bone.

"So when you talk about success of the women's league, when you talk about standing up for the rights of girls and women in sports, she's the perfect person."

Without basketball Orender insists her career - her whole life - would be different.

"It has everything to do with who I am today," she said. "It gave me the opportunity to play on a team and learn the rules of competition and what is required in terms of being a winner."

Who could have imagined where it would take her?

Not Orender.

She grew up the oldest of three daughters, excelling in all sports, especially tennis. Her two younger sisters showed little interest in sports - now, one is an artist, the other a teacher. Her parents pushed dance class. They bought her dolls. She wanted the ball.

"I played tennis," Orender said. "That was my first sport. I was pretty good, enough to be noticed by national coaches. But I preferred a team environment. I like the collaborative process. I just seemed to have that physical ability to shoot and I loved to run. There was poetry in basketball for me.

"I loved being able to go to a playground and have the guys say, 'What do you want?' and I say, 'I want to play.' Then them question me and be able to prove myself."

Yet, at no time did she consider where it all might lead. There were no role models for a little girl wanting to hoop. There were few proven trails for a career woman interested in professional sports. There was plenty of skepticism.

"As a matter of fact, when I played professional basketball, I remember being interviewed by a CBS sports person who said, 'Hey, did you ever dream of this?' And I said 'No.' I never had the dream because I never thought it was possible. I was a little angry about it. Felt disrespected.

"So to sit here now and see how much progress has been made, but how much upside there continues to be, definitely continues to fire my competitive juices. I know how fundamentally important this is. It is more than fun and games. It's life. And we have an opportunity to make a significant impact."

One of Orender's favorite messages when invited as a guest speaker focuses on doors that are opening for young women through athletics. Years ago the first question an aspiring woman faced was not if she were able to do something, but rather if she would be allowed to try. By Orender's thinking, there is no better example than basketball to demonstrate how times have only begun to change.

"If you look at the origin of women's basketball, it started as a halfcourt game because it was not thought that women's hearts were strong enough to handle it," she said. "They could not go beyond half court and have the stamina to continue. They played in dresses and bloomers. That's kind of comical.

"Think about a society that told women they were not strong enough, they were not capable enough, and how you would internalize that as a young woman and how that plays out in your everyday life. Now here we are, people standing and cheering for women who sweat and get dirty and throw themselves on the floor and are physical. It's remarkable. That's important because inherent to basketball are so many of the values that life demands to succeed."

If it takes a crusade to change yesterday's thinking, then Orender will crusade. If the work must be done one person at a time, then she vows to work the crowd.

That is a reason - despite the commuter marriage that keeps her and M.G. traveling between New York and Jacksonville Beach - that Orender finds time to coach her sons' 9- and 10-year-old youth league basketball team.

The Terrapins, with the only female coach in league history, play hard, work tirelessly on fundamentals - and win.

"When I show up I'm just a mom," she said. "They don't know who I am or what I do, so I have mothers come up to me and say, 'I just love what you are doing. Thank you. It's so important for my son to have a woman who can tell him what to do in sports.'

"Then I have guys who look at me like, 'Who is she?' But I don't think it takes them long to understand I know my fair share about the game."

Her game.

Reporter Mick Elliott can be reached at (813) 281-2534 or melliott@tampatrib.com.

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