Toronto Tempo embraced their fans as co-authors of the team's story

The curtain has drawn on the Toronto Tempo’s inaugural season, one that saw Canada’s first WNBA expansion team hit the ground sprinting. 

The team played its first game just 50 days after a CBA between the league and the players union was reached, leaving little time for general manager Monika Wright-Rogers and head coach Sandy Brondello to assemble a roster. 

But after expansion and entry drafts, and free agency, fans wearing Tempo bordeaux and borealis blue could finally cheer for actual players and not simply a franchise or an idea. 

Women’s basketball in Canada is growing in popularity and many Canadians were overjoyed at the Tempo’s tip-off. I attended the first pre-season and regular-season home games in May, and then the final one in September, where the team received a standing ovation during the final seconds in the fourth quarter. You would never know that the New York Liberty beat the Toronto Tempo by 37 points.

“Thank you to the best fans in the league,” read the jumbotron screen at Coca-Cola Coliseum. 

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Lindsay Dunn is an independent reporter who covers basketball, and is co-host of the Hoop There It Is show. She told me that the fandom did not surprise her. 

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“I don’t think it should have surprised anybody in this country,” she said, pointing to games the league showcased in Canada over the previous couple of years. "We've already seen the hunger for the WNBA in Canada … the games that were already played here in previous years, the exhibition games and then finally the regular season game, they were sold out.” 

Dunn said the Tempo’s regular season