For the past six years, Girls Got Game has been on a mission – to empower young women through sports by holding camps in urban and rural poor areas.
However, when the girls turn into women basketball players, where do they go after college?
For GGG founder Krizanne Ty, she hopes that the Women’s National Basketball League becomes the home to them.
“For the league, the organizers themselves – being in this position is a privilege and responsibility – it’s all about and all the hopes for this continue on and not just die down since it just started. It’s full commitment, full-on until hopefully forever.
“That’s one of the most important parts, I think, because a lot of people aspired. And it’s just maybe 100 people against 700 people who happened to get in. But you see, there are 600 more people who actually want this to continue on, so as you can see the interest is there, definitely,” Ty said during an episode of So She Did! presented by SMART Sports.
Ty herself joined the WNBL Draft Combine last December 13.
Although it’s been 10 years since her time with Ateneo in the UAAP, the 5-foot-3 guard – a fixed income and currencies trader in Deutsche Bank – was still in peak form. Ty finished the lane agility run at 14.03-seconds; the 3/4 court sprint at 3.47 ticks; and the 300-yard shuttle with a time of 1:05; while shooting 50-percent in the drills.
After all, Ty herself has been looking for a home where she can play competitive basketball.
“Probably joined more than 20 leagues the past years, I even thought of doing one myself. I mean Girls Got Game, we were thinking about that at the long term – doing a lot of festivals across all sports among women. It was just a matter of time and resource. So for me, I knew it wasn’t the best time yet for us,” she opined.
“But I think given that WNBL started, and I think it’s a very good first step regardless of… I guess people will always talk about different things, whatever they say doesn’t gonna matter at this point in time. What matters is we’re bringing the professional women’s basketball to the next level.
“So it should be people just helping each other and supporting it anyway.”
On Saturday, Ty will be one of the 115 hopefuls looking to be drafted.
But even if her name won’t be called, Ty will make sure to help the league out in building role models for the next generation of women’s basketball players.
“I think I mentioned this before when I was having a discussion with Mia [Montayre] and the rest of the WNBL team… Do you know the NBA Cares, WNBA Cares program? I think giving back to the sport that we love and being able to hone this and transfer it to the future generations should be next,” she shared.
“I’m all about grassroots that I’m very passionate from Girls Got Game, to Game On Sports. I’m very passionate about building the next future athletes and… Yeah, so I’m really hopeful and I’m really really happy from where WNBL is right now.”
