As I write this, it's almost noon where I am, in the Central Time Zone, on a Tuesday, and the Washington Mystics lead the Chicago Sky in the third quarter 52-46.
Now, you might be thinking, "wait, why is there a WNBA game happening this early on a Tuesday?" And then you might Google the WNBA schedule and see that on Wednesday, there are games starting at 11:00 a.m. ET, 12:00 p.m. ET and 3:30 p.m. ET, and then you scroll a bit more and see that Thursday's Lynx/Sparks game is at 3:00 p.m. ET, which means a noon local tip.
If you're new to the WNBA, this might seem weird, and you might be mad that you don't get to watch your local team from the comfort of your couch. Instead, you've got them up in a second tab on your work computer, and you have to keep switching when your boss walks by, and you're really mad about it. "Who scheduled these games?," you're saying. "Why would they do that?"
Alright, enough hypotheticals. Let's talk about camp games and why the Indiana Fever and Golden State Valkyries are playing at Noon on a Wednesday in July.
It's a big week for WNBA camp games
There's a long tradition in the WNBA of camp games taking place. These are games that happen during the day on weekdays and exist as a way of getting summer camp groups and daycare kids out to see a basketball game.
I used to work in summer childcare, and we did some fun trips with our kids — the botanical garden, an indoor aquarium, the Boy Scout museum. It would have been so much fun if we could have gone to a WNBA game with them, and I'm sure a lot of kids are becoming lifelong fans of the league this week as they're exposed to live sports for, potentially, the first time. (Unfortunately, our field trips were on Wednesdays, and that year's Wings camp game was on a Tuesday. I remember this vividly because that was the game where Liz Cambage scored 53 points, and I was watching it on my phone at an oil change place because I'd taken the bus in for a tune-up before we took the kids on a field trip the next morning. I'm not sure why I felt compelled to share that, but like...imagine the kids who got to see Cambage break the scoring record that afternoon! I bet they had so much fun!!)
Camp games help grow the game. When people talk about the league growing, they often talk about TV ratings, and people who are against camp games often cite the lack of TV viewership for a game at Noon on a Wednesday as evidence against these camp games existing. Growth is about more than that, though! It's about getting people engaged in the league, and camp games provide a way for new fans to get involved.
So yeah, if you're wondering what's up with the schedule this week, it's because the league wants kids to come watch basketball games, so don't grumble about it. Embrace one of the funnest quirks of the WNBA schedule!