New WNBA initiative allows girls to cosplay Caitlin Clark, Sabrina Ionescu in parks across the U.S.

Outdoor basketball courts nationwide will soon have the WNBA’s three-point line painted onto them.

That’s thanks to a new WNBA initiative, ‘Line ‘Em Up’, an initiative aimed at bringing the women’s professional game closer to communities by painting the official WNBA three-point line on park basketball courts across the country. As part of the program, the WNBA will also be making donations to participating park courts.

Phil Cook, the WNBA’s Chief Marketing Officer, told SB Nation that the initiative is part of the league’s desire to inspire young athletes.

“One of the elements that drives the WNBA — and has been a part of our DNA for all 29 years — is the idea of continuing to grow the game and find opportunities to inspire young athletes to pick up a ball for the first time, and inspire those athletes to continue to play longer,” Cook said. “So this initiative is just the latest iteration of finding ways to unlock access and inspire play.”

“We had a very robust conversation around what is a repeatable legacy program that is easy to execute, that is replicable by teams, by players, by communities,” Cook said.

“The idea came that we should present some WNBA representation in the park, right in the community, in the area where every single basketball player who’s ever played the game has spent time — and that’s on an outdoor court. So the idea came to drop the WNBA three-point line in our distinctive, unique, own orange color, so that young girls players, young girls know that they’re being represented, and that they can replicate the shots that their heroes made the night before.”

The WNBA’s launch event, which is closed to the public, will take place on Thursday, June 12th at Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 2. In addition to WNBA league executives, special guests from the New York Liberty will be in attendance.

“We’ll use this as the basis to launch the initiative, launch the story, and then continue to work across the country in different markets,” Cook said. “Now we can start to leverage our 13 team markets. Each athlete comes from their own distinctive market. The hope is that this goes to some degree of viral behavior, and communities pick up on it themselves, and other communities are asking for the deputy to come in and do some work. We’ve identified parks across the country.”

The league also debuted a short film promoting the initiative, featuring WNBA legends like Tina Charles, Epiphanny Prince, Chamique Holdsclaw, and Sue Bird.

Next month, WNBA All-Star weekend will take place in Indianapolis, and Cook said the league has identified some parks in the city that will participate in the initiative. While the league has not set a specific target, the goal is to have 20 to 30 courts over the next few months.

“A dream scenario for me is that this orange line ends up on thousands of driveways across the country,” Cook said. “That every young girl that is out there getting shots up in her own driveway, her own backyard, takes out her orange chalk and marks out the W line on the driveway and imagines herself being in the WNBA one day, shooting from that distance.”

As it currently stands, most basketball courts mark the three-point line as the high school line. The WNBA line is 2.3 feet further than the high school line.

“They’re going to recognize right away that that’s that’s the same line that Caitlin [Clark] or Sabrina [Ionescu] or Kelsey Plum shoot from on any given night,” Cook said. “And they can now go in and imagine themselves doing the same.”