WNBA Suspends Seattle Storm Co-Owner Five Games for Confronting Anti-Trans Activists Courtside

Anti-trans provocateurs bankrolled by the right were sitting courtside with signs praising WNBA player Sophie Cunningham. Celeste Keaton reportedly confronted them.

rawpixel.com / Markus Spiske

The WNBA has long been considered “the most LGBT-inclusive professional sports league,” as per The Advocate; it was the first professional sports league to launch a Pride Month campaign. But Celeste Keaton, co-owner of the Seattle Storm, has been fined and sidelined—at least for now—because of a heated confrontation with a paid anti-trans advocate sitting courtside at a game.

Ahnaleigh Wilson, a Washington teenager, is an activist in the anti-trans movement’s political crusade against athletes. She and another young woman, who has not been publicly named, donned t-shirts from XX-XY Athletics—a sportswear company founded for the explicit purpose of advancing the assault on trans rights. It sponsors Wilson, a high school runner, and its “charitable” arm awarded her $5,000 for publicly outing and deriding another student athlete who was reportedly transgender.

Wilson and her counterpart also carried signs praising WNBA player Sophie Cunningham “for speaking up for girls,” as Wilson’s poster read. Cunningham, a guard for the Indiana Fever, also recently won words of support from the White House because she denounced equal rights for trans people in sports and called trans women “biological males.”

Political tensions were boiling ahead of Tuesday’s Storm-Fever face-off. Outside the Seattle stadium, opposing protests formed. Wilson joined a few dozen people sporting pro-Cunningham signs, XX-XY merchandise, and advertisements for the conservative organization Let’s Go Washington. The group is spearheading efforts to install a statewide ban on trans girls in women’s sports.

Afterwards, Wilson and the other young woman made their way to courtside seats, clutching their Sophie Cunningham posters with the social media handle of XX-XY scrawled by hand along the side.

Wilson told a far-right podcaster after the game that they “weren’t trying to be political.” Still, they were seemingly primed to grab the attention of viewers at home. Their propaganda also caught the eye of Keaton.

As per Wilson’s telling, Keaton approached the young women and said: “Jesus loves everyone.”

“I was like, ‘Oh, I know. I’m religious,’” Wilson said. “And [Keaton is] like, ‘I hope Jesus can forgive you for what sin you’ve done,’ something like that.”

The exchange allegedly escalated. According to Wilson and her seatmate—who, again, wore shirts prominently advertising an anti-trans organization—Keaton called them “fucking insane” and said they’d “better stop pulling this shit.”

Keaton has not publicly commented on her side of the story, but the Storm’s majority owner, Ginny Gilder, apologized on Keaton’s behalf. “We are aware one of our co-owners made comments to two fans in attendance at last night’s game,” Gilder told Front Office Sports in a statement. “We apologize that this happened. Everyone who attends a Storm game deserves to feel welcome, and we remain committed to creating an inclusive environment where every fan is treated with respect.”

Apparently, however, this excludes trans people and allies who don’t want to be subjected to dehumanizing rhetoric on the court; the WNBA fined Keaton an undisclosed amount and suspended her from five home games.

Cunningham and the Fever, for their part, said they were not aware of the rally or the signage stunt ahead of the game, and that no Fever player coordinated with the protestors in any way.

But Cunningham’s reputation precedes her. Despite her fanfare about wanting to “protect” women in sports, she was perhaps best known before this for a vicious physical attack on another woman athlete. Cunningham put the Connecticut Sun’s Jacy Sheldon in a headlock and “yanked Sheldon down by her neck,” resulting in a flagrant foul and causing Cunningham to be ejected from the game. The incident sparked a dedicated fanbase for Cunningham.

“I guess when you take a girl’s head off, people love that stuff,” she told ESPN.