SEATTLE, Wa. Jan. 9 2008 - A group of Seattle Storm season ticket-holders, with the financial means to be taken seriously, is making sure the Storm isn’t leaving Seattle. Force 10 Hoops (great name for the group of women who have obtained an option to purchase the team), along with the stepped up support of the fans, corporate partners and the city, bring a vision and enthusiasm to the championship team.
And on the same day as the purchase announcement come reports that the team’s new coach will be Brian Agler. An assistant coach with the WNBA San Antonio Silver Stars, Angler succeeds Anne Donovan who resigned Nov. 30.
So who, or what, is Force 10? On the historic Beaufort scale, Force 10 is the point at which bad weather officially becomes a storm. Force 10 Hoops, LLC was created to ensure that the WNBA’s Storm continues in Seattle.
Political dynamo Anne Levinson brought the new ownership group together and led the $10M deal. Levinson has served as a judge, chairwoman of the Washington State Utilities and Transportation Commission and deputy mayor of Seattle. She is also a Storm season-ticket holder, and by the time the deal closes at the end of February, she and three well-heeled friends will own the team they spend summers rooting for.
Force 10 also includes Ginny Gilder, who owns an investment business, is president of a family philanthropy and won a silver medal at the L.A. Olympics in rowing; Lisa Brummel, senior vice president of human resources at Microsoft and a Yale athlete named to the Ivy League Women’s Hall of Fame for Softball and Dawn Trudeau, who formerly headed Microsoft’s database division and now works with nonprofits.
The sale, which needs to be approved by the WNBA board of governors, would make the Storm the seventh independently owned WNBA team, joining Atlanta, Chicago, Connecticut, Houston, Los Angeles and Washington. It’s the third team with a majority female ownership, along with Washington and Los Angeles.
The group expects the team, led by players such as Sue Bird and Lauren Jackson, will continue to play at the KeyArena, located at the Seattle Center.
Get ready for storm watch!
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