TORONTO — Stacey Dales, the veteran broadcaster and former WNBA player, directed a fairly simple question at Teresa Resch.
Resch accomplished a lot over her decade with the Toronto Raptors. She walked away from the team earlier this year with a championship ring, which is cool, but she was involved in many notable projects with the team. She was crucial in helping get the OVO Athletic Centre, the Raptors’ practice facility that takes up a large chunk of the west side of Exhibition Place, built and opened in 2016. That involved plenty of headaches and governmental red tape, and now serves as the franchise’s de facto headquarters. A big building, but no small feat.
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Back to the question: What would the new, yet-to-be-named Toronto WNBA team’s opening day or night feel like for her?
“Like just the greatest day of my life,” Resch responded quickly.
Resch will serve as the 2026 expansion team’s president, an open secret since she left the Raptors. Sure, Larry Tanenbaum played a massive part in making the team a reality, but Resch was frequently his sounding board. She had been mentioned as a candidate for other sports executive jobs in the past in men’s sports.
This opportunity was different.
“If this was going to happen in Toronto,” Resch said, “I was going to be part of it.”
Welcome to the 6️⃣ix @WNBA_Toronto https://t.co/r79EBJPnF9
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) May 23, 2024
One of the biggest themes of Thursday’s announcement was the importance of representation and role modelling for girls and women. Resch and WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert spoke about the strong correlation between girls playing sports as kids and women who reach the upper echelon of the business world as adults.
Resch is a prominent example of that. She was a Division II volleyball player at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, S.D. After stops with the NBA and LifeTime Fitness as the Ultimate Hoops national basketball operations manager, she went to the Raptors. Later in her run, she became more of an advocate for women in sports, becoming an adviser and board member for multiple initiatives designed to create more opportunities in that field.
Taking this job is a perfect example of showing, not telling.
“A lot of these women athletes are role models for me even though I might be twice their age,” Resch said. “If you look at Caitlin Clark, she’s 22 years old, she had eyeballs of probably the entire world on her. She made it to the Final Four. She gets drafted the next week, she’s in training camp two days after that and she’s making her debut on an international stage. It’s incredible the composure and the way she was able to manage that.
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“When you talk about role models, I think that these women that are playing are role models not just for young women and girls, but for everybody.”
Tammy Sutton-Brown was one of the Canadian trailblazers from that perspective, making two WNBA All-Star Games in her 12-year career, finishing her time in the league with a championship in her final season. She was involved with player development and community outreach with Raptors 905 before taking a job with Nike as a marketing specialist.
Before that, she was just a kid from Markham, Ontario, trying to find a path for her obvious basketball talent.
“There was no WNBA when I was playing growing up,” Sutton-Brown said during a panel after the announcement of the Toronto expansion team. “And so my role models were Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson. Those were my role models because that’s who I saw on television. So I smile every time this next generation of kids come in, a rookie class comes in and people have grown up with the W. And their role models are Dawn Staley, Sue Bird, Sheryl Swoopes, because they grew up watching the W.”
TV is one thing. Going to a game makes a dream even more concrete.
“I think having role models in market will have a huge impact on the next generation of young athletes,” Sutton-Brown said. “It’s one thing to watch on TV, but to see a game live in person, there’s something really special about that. There’s something really special about meeting your favourite player and getting an autograph, taking a picture. You hear time and time again athletes say, when they were younger, they met their favourite player and the impact it had on their game. It inspired them to (get to) where they are now.”
On and off the court, Torontonians and Canadians will be able to put faces to their goals and dreams.
(Photo, from left, of Stacey Dales, Teresa Resch, Cathy Engelbert and Tammy Sutton-Brown: Vaughn Ridley / NBAE via Getty Images)
Eric Koreen is the lead Raptors writer for The Athletic. Previously, he has covered the Raptors and the NBA for the National Post, VICE Sports and Sportsnet. Follow Eric on Twitter @ekoreen
