The Bay Space has grow to be a hotbed for girls’s sports activities over the previous few years. Bay FC of the NWSL set the usual after they got here into the combo in 2024. The next 12 months, the Golden State Valkyries joined the WNBA and now, as of Tuesday, the PWHL has granted San Jose an growth franchise as effectively.
On Tuesday afternoon, the PWHL hosted a press convention to formally announce their twelfth franchise, PWHL San Jose.
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The occasion started with the friends of honor coming into the venue in low-riders owned by girls from East Aspect San Jose’s United Low-Rider Council. These friends included Amy Scheer, the PWHL’s Senior Vice President of Enterprise Operations, Jonathan Becher, the President of Sharks Sports activities and Leisure, the mayor of San Jose Matt Mahan, and Bay Space legends Kristi Yamaguchi and Brandi Chastain.
“Hockey has formally grow to be a part of the material of this neighborhood, and now younger athletes throughout Northern California may have one thing that a lot of them have by no means obtained to expertise earlier than,” the host of the night Brodie Brazil stated in his opening feedback. “That may be a skilled girls’s hockey group that they’ll name their very own. It may be a group they’ll watch, it is going to be a group they’ll cheer for, and most significantly, a group they’ll see themselves in.”
For a few years, there was no means for a younger woman within the Bay Space to see folks like her carry out on a grand stage.
“Truthfully, I am nearly confused, as a result of as a younger woman rising up in South San Jose, there have been no skilled girls’s group sports activities,” Chastain, a co-founder of the Bay FC stated of the addition of San Jose to the PWHL.
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“San Jose within the Bay Space is about dreamers, it is about believers, it is about innovators, it is about startup tradition, about transferring ahead quick and never being afraid. We imagine that ladies’s sports activities just isn’t a hiccup, it is not a charity. Now we have believed in girls’s sports activities for a very long time.”
Kristi Yamaguchi chatting with the gang – Picture @ Curt Silver
There had beforehand been makes an attempt to ascertain the Bay as a official marketplace for girls’s sports activities, however they by no means lasted lengthy. The San Jose Lasers for instance, had been a short-lived franchise within the American Basketball League which folded in 1998. There have been a few makes an attempt to ascertain a profitable girls’s soccer group as effectively, with the San Jose CyberRays and FC Gold pleasure. Now, although, issues have modified significantly.
Bay FC completed their second season with the fourth greatest attendance within the NWSL whereas the Golden State Valkyries completed the 2025 season with the best attendance within the WNBA.
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In his media availability, Becher revealed that San Jose had tried to get an growth franchise forward of the 2025-26 season, however finally the PWHL opted to go together with Vancouver and Seattle as an alternative.
Scheer introduced that there have been greater than 1,000 deposits made towards PWHL San Jose season tickets by the point she arrived on the SAP Heart on Tuesday morning. Becher appeared to have a extra up-to-date quantity, however did not share it, stating, “their deposits are already over the roof, I am not imagined to inform you the quantity, nevertheless it’s effectively above their expectations.”
San Jose is rising each as a hub for girls’s sports activities and as a hockey market, consequently, the PWHL determined it was time to take benefit and introduced a group to the Bay Space.