From hoops to oysters: Contained in the sudden second acts of WNBA stars

After seven days of wind, the morning is lastly calm sufficient on New York’s East Moriches Bay for Sue Wicks to jetty her boat to examine on her oysters. Hundreds of cages come out at odd angles from their strains, and some float away.

The retired WNBA star and Hall of Famer admits that the aquaculture farm she began at age 50 will be anxiety-inducing and compares it to her time enjoying basketball.

“Some days you’re like, ‘Why am I doing this?’ You’re injured, you’re hurt, you are losing, things are going bad. And then the next day you go back and do it again because you love it,” she stated.

Wicks, 59, has labored as a commentator, school basketball coach and at a health start-up since retiring from the WNBA in 2002, and says she feels fortunate to once more discover a profession “that works for my soul.” But the fact is that even a profitable run as one of many world’s finest basketball gamers didn’t earn her sufficient to totally retire.

Although the WNBA is bringing in additional than ever from sponsors and ticket gross sales, many gamers nonetheless discover themselves financially unsteady when the ultimate whistle blows.

“The choice is what they do as their second career, not whether they have a second career,” stated Risa Isard, director of analysis and insights at girls’s sports activities advertising platform Parity. Since “women athletes get paid a fraction of what men do while they’re playing,” Isard stated their subsequent acts are likely to look extra like conventional profession paths slightly than managing substantial funding portfolios.

The common NBA wage is round $11.9 million, based on information reviewed by The Associated Press. That’s practically 100 instances what the WNBA says is the common wage of $120,000 for its gamers — though main variations in league measurement, age, revenue margins and media contracts account for a part of that hole.

For 2009 second total draft choose and 2015 WNBA all-star Marissa Coleman, the primary distinction between post-playing careers between WNBA and NBA gamers is that “most NBA guys are sitting on tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars.” And for many who are financially savvy, working after the sport is “extra so curing boredom versus a necessity.”

“Most girls athletes throughout the board should discover a profession after basketball out of necessity,” Coleman stated.

All that is occurring towards a backdrop of unresolved questions concerning the way forward for WNBA participant compensation. Tensions have run excessive within the ongoing labour battle between the WNBA and the gamers’ union, though it’s unclear how far aside the perimeters are by way of compensation. Both events agreed on Nov. 30 to an extension of the present collective bargaining settlement to Jan. 9 whereas negotiations proceed.

A significant sticking level has been income sharing: As the WNBA booms, gamers are searching for a bigger share in that development. They at the moment earn a considerably smaller fraction of the league’s income in contrast with NBA gamers.

When former Minnesota Lynx ahead Devereaux Peters transitioned from basketball to actual property improvement in 2019, she stated the toughest lesson was studying that working laborious in her new profession might not be sufficient to yield outcomes shortly, or in any respect. After a troublesome sport throughout her enjoying days, she might “go within the fitness center and shoot and work on my shot. And you’re going to see a end result should you’re placing within the work.”

“That is not necessarily true in the real world,” stated the 36-year-old. “You can put in a ton of labor and do lots proper and never get anyplace.”

The shift away from basketball additionally got here as a monetary shock: “That transition was a little bit difficult in that I had to cut back significantly,” she stated. “There was a lot of learning very quickly” given the “big gap in what I was making then and what I make now.”

For the final six years, Peters has shepherded an reasonably priced housing venture in South Bend, Indiana — residence to her alma mater, Notre Dame. Red tape, politics, and myriad different logistical challenges have made the venture “the toughest factor I’ve ever finished in my life,” Peters stated.

But she says it is also one of the best: “Helping people that truly, genuinely need it” makes all of it price it. Her reasonably priced house constructing is slated to interrupt floor subsequent month, and open its doorways in August 2027.

For 38-year-old Coleman, the subsequent part of her profession additionally unfolded far outdoors the paint. Alongside former teammate Alana Beard, Coleman franchised a Mellow Mushroom — a psychedelic-themed pizza chain — in Roanoke, Virginia. She additionally chaired a marketing campaign to legalize sports activities betting in Maryland, and now leads technique and development for the VIP crew at fantasy sports activities platform Underdog, with the goal of carving house for extra girls and other people of color to entry the trade.

“I knew from a very early age entrepreneurship and business were something that I was really, really passionate about,” Coleman stated.

She added that she feels grateful to her dad and mom for emphasizing the significance of schooling and long-term profession planning. Thanks to their knowledge, she made positive to hunt out mentors and discover industries that her all through her basketball profession.

“I knew I didn’t want to be one of those players that retired, and it was like, ‘Oh gosh, what now?’” Coleman stated.

Many former athletes land in sports-related roles, reminiscent of teaching or sports activities broadcasting. But not all are surefooted to find their subsequent calling.

Jayne Appel Marinelli, SVP of participant relations for the league’s union and a former centre for the San Antonio Stars, counsels gamers on their post-basketball profession path. She defined the transition stays difficult for a lot of, even with the WNBA and union’s joint tuition help and internship program, and semester-long alternative with Harvard Business School, which Coleman accomplished.

The gamers’ union has labored to additional broaden alternatives by including participant internship slots to licensee contracts, partnering with universities and extra, based on Appel Marinelli. Athletes “typically need assistance recognizing that the abilities that they’ve constructed are so simply transferable over to any position that they’re going to tackle subsequent,” she stated.

That form of help did not exist for Wicks’ technology on the league’s inception in 1997. There “was no stability in women’s sports,” she stated. “Our victory was, we got our next paycheck, and that the lights were on and that the bus was waiting there still.”

Back then, “my dream was that the league would exist,” Wicks stated. Almost 30 years later, her new dream is that gamers “are compensated in a method that offers them freedom to do what they need in life.”

Despite her personal post-WNBA success, Peters says gamers might use extra steering to assist them perceive the best way to plan, save and put together for the long run.

“The general lifespan of a basketball player is not long,” she stated. “You have to be prepared to not be here tomorrow or the next year.”