The sad reality of the WNBA Draft

Author’s note: Ahead of Monday’s 2022 WNBA Draft (preview here), On Her Turf spoke to three draft picks from 2021 about how their rookie experience in the league played out. 

As her college basketball career was coming to a close, Trinity Baptiste created a vision board. It was red and navy – the colors of the Arizona Wildcats – and it included a variety of goals all written in Baptiste’s neat handwriting: win the NCAA women’s basketball championship, get her Masters’ degree, and make it to the WNBA.

“I saw it in my room every day and just manifested it,” said Baptiste, who was a graduate transfer at Arizona during the 2020-21 season.

Baptiste and her teammates came as close as possible to winning the NCAA championship without actually winning it, losing to Stanford 54-53 in the 2021 title game.

Eleven days later – after the rush of securing an agent, simultaneously celebrating and commiserating Arizona’s NCAA tournament result, and making a cross-country drive home to Florida – Baptiste was watching the 2021 WNBA Draft on TV with her family.

As the second round was nearing the end, “I thought I wasn’t going to get picked,” Baptiste said. “In my mind, I was like, ‘This is kind of embarrassing. I’m sitting here watching with my family and I’m not going to get picked.'”

Baptiste was ultimately selected by the Indiana Fever as the No. 24 overall pick. “It was a great feeling hearing your name called,” she said. “It’s a surreal feeling that I cannot explain.”

But two weeks later, Baptiste was already on her way back home to Tampa. Midway through training camp, she was called into a meeting with Fever general manager Tamika Catchings and head coach Marianne Stanley and was told she was getting waived — with a flight back to