From dream to debut: Resch reflects as Canada’s first WNBA team tips off

May 6 : When Teresa Resch first spotted a Toronto Tempo jersey "in the wild" she stopped in her tracks.

"To see a random person wearing your jersey, that was pretty cool," the team president said. "So I went up and said hello and introduced myself and took a picture, put her on my Instagram page."

For Resch, it was a quiet but powerful sign that Canada's first WNBA team had crossed from idea to reality - not in a boardroom or at a podium, but on the street, worn by someone who already felt connected to it.

On Friday, the Tempo tip off their inaugural season when they host the Washington Mystics at Coca-Cola Coliseum, the culmination of months of compressed preparation and years of belief that professional women's basketball would finally have a permanent home north of the border.

"What am I feeling right now? What I'll go with is extreme excitement," Resch said in an interview with Reuters. "It's truly a culmination of so many people's work, (but) not just the people working on it now, but so many people who have laid the groundwork ahead of us.

"It's going to be historic in so many ways, and there are a lot of people who never thought this day would come."

That sense of scale has sharpened quickly.

In roughly a 20‑day span this spring, the Tempo named a new principal owner in former Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri, unveiled their court, announced plans for a performance centre, selected players in the expansion draft, went on sale with single-game tickets – selling out multiple games – and opened training camp.

"All of this is happening really quickly," Resch said. "It's pretty incredible."

Behind the scenes, the work has been relentless from negotiating player housing, furnishing apartments and setting up banking systems