By Jason Pike
The Maritime Women’s Basketball Association (MWBA) is an amateur league designed for women 19 and over and offers a competitive environment under a well-maintained operation including an involved executive and board of directors made up almost entirely of women.
No one can argue the fact that women’s basketball has grown exponentially in 2024. The arrival of Caitlin Clark on the professional basketball scene has skyrocketed attention to women’s basketball in particularly even more for the WNBA.
Clark’s impact has amplified an already upward trend of fan interest in women’s basketball. The total attendance record for Division I women’s basketball was broken in the 2022-23 season at 8,784,401, which surpassed the previous record by more than 150,000.
At the 2023 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship, a tournament-record 357,542 fans attended. This was capped by a sellout crowd of 19,482 at the championship game between Iowa and LSU.
Clark’s presence also drove major increases for tentpole WNBA events. The 2024 draft, when the Fever selected Clark with the first pick, drew 2.45 million viewers, more than quadruple the 2023 draft’s 572,000 viewers. And though this is not an article about Caitlin Clark per se it will help to demonstrate my point.
The MWBA
Moncton Mystics, Lake City 56ers, Halifax Hornets, Miramichi Her-icanes, Halifax Thunder, Port City Fog, Fredericton freeze are the seven teams that will comprise the 2024 season of the maritime Women’s Basketball Association.The MWBA spent its first two seasons as a six-team league.
The Original Six consisted of Thunder, Halifax Hornets, Windsor (NS) Edge, Fredericton Freeze, Port City Fog of Saint John and Moncton Mystics. The Edge left the Nova Scotia valley region for Dartmouth/Cole Harbour in 2024 where it became the Lake City 56ers
The Miramichi Her-Icanes blasted onto the MWBA stage and had a tremendous season on the court and at the gate, taking the basketball mad city by storm as the league increased to seven teams. All of the teams knock on doors and reach out to potential partners in their own backyards and that community support is what allows our teams to keep returning. There is interest in expansion for 2025. A Nova Scotia entity met with MWBA officials during Legacy Cup weekend and has expressed a desire to join the league.
At least one Prince Edward Island interest has reached out to the league.
Where is the Newfoundland Team?
Which now brings me to my point! Could there be room to integrate a Newfoundland team into this league? And before you jump all over me, saying that the league has to be very frugal with his finances, I’m not suggesting that to start we enter into a regular schedule in the league as such, but potentially start with an exhibition series, with several of the teams, just to see where we stand as a province competitively with these players.
You might be surprised to learn that Newfoundland and Labrador is not considered a Maritime province, mainly because it was the last to join Confederation. Instead, Newfoundland and the Maritimes are together referred to as Atlantic Canada but we really are only in spitting distance of the other three Maritime Provinces. And this is very doable.
Money talks
I think the hardest thing to overcome though, more than the finances, is a history of a negative Newfoundland attitude towards well… everything! Anything that requires outside of the box thinking is often build is ludicrous around here, and I never really understood all the excuses we often give ourselves to avoid trying something new. I mean, what is the cause of that anyway? Is that because we have been primarily a have not Province for most of our history? Or, is it because sometimes things are a little more difficult to do if it requires you figuring out things, instead of having it dropped in your lap.
Based on that attitude we will never have, or sustain anything of any substance here. In a previous article I wrote about St John’s Edge when they first came here, and how so many naysayers said this is not a basketball town, this is a hockey town, and basketball will never work here, but yet the St John’s Edge were posting way bigger attendance numbers than the Newfoundland Growlers, who were housed in the exact same building. Still excuses were found, mostly to the tune of, “Well tickets to see the St John’s Edge were a lot cheaper” so people were going there instead!
I shake my head when I hear stuff like that, because it’s just a cop out, yes the tickets may have been cheaper to see basketball or maybe the hockey tickets were overpriced for the quality of hockey.
You can make that argument or possibly, just possibly, basketball was more entertaining. I can guarantee you, that was the big draw at the St. John’s Edge games, the atmosphere was positively electric, from energetic hosts to the edge dancers to the basketball being generally more exciting and fast-paced, oh and yeah warmer!
Lets get over it
But we need to get past these ideas that just because it hasn’t been here before that it can’t work, I mean it’s been proven time and time again that this is not really true, so opening your eyes and your minds to the possibility of an amateur / Semi-Pro Women’s Basketball team competing against our three neighbouring Atlantic provinces, is not really a stretch, it just takes a few people saying, “Okay we can do this, it won’t be easy but let’s find a way to do it”.
We are consistently bringing up superior women’s basketball players in his province each year, Honorable mention, Gonzaga High School Sarah Reid, who was a member of Team Canada this past season, and that’s an accolade not too many people can boast from this province.
Yes there are a few hurdles, if we were to host games here, but the venues are here, There may need to be a few bells and whistles added in to make them adequate, but it isn’t anything far-fetched or out to lunch that cannot be achieved.
Start the conversation
My intent here is to try to start that conversation, to try and expand someone’s mind and ideas and awaken that idea in them to maybe say “Hey, let’s start a campaign to try to make this happen”. Let’s reach out to the Maritime Women’s Basketball Association and see what kind of understanding we can come to. Because for this league to truly grow and for basketball and women’s basketball even more so, to grow, expansion of this kind really needs to happen. As I mentioned earlier, the interest from the province of Prince Edward Island in joining the league has already been put forth and that will be a new horizon for that league.
So as we edge into the last months of 2024, the MWBA is approaching the fourth season, and essentially there are limitless possibilities here, but they first need to start with a conversation.
