STING PRIDE

The team no longer exists. The players have scattered. But nearly two decades ago, in a dry season for sports in this city, the Charlotte Sting advanced to the WNBA Finals for the only time in its 10-year history, and the four women who led the charge—all with ties to the Carolinas—still find ways to push the ball downcourt

- JARRETT VAN METER

IT WAS THE QUIETEST ROOM IN MANHATTAN. No taxi horns, no sirens, no click-clacking of heels against pavement. The Charlotte Sting faced playoff elimination, but the locker room was suffused with a calm confidence, a collective belief that every piece they needed was within those four walls. All that lay between them and a WNBA Eastern Conference championship was the New York Liberty and … a training table?

Deep within Madison Square Garden, the team gathered for what threatened to be the final pregame address of the season. After New York claimed Game 1 of the conference finals in Charlotte, the Sting had to beat the Liberty twice on the road to win the best-of-three series. Head coach Anne Donovan reviewed the game plan and matchups, and her assistants followed up with spirited exhortations. But it was Charlotte Smith, the Sting’s unofficial team chaplain, who closed the meeting.

“There was a training table in the middle of the guest locker room where you sat to get treatment and your ankles taped,” Smith recalls 19 years later. “I got the team to march around the training table like we were marching around the Walls of Jericho. I told them that the walls would come tumbling down, and that we would win the series.”