Washington has four major professional sports teams and several other professional and semi-professional sports teams. College sports are also popular in Washington.
The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) - colloquially known as "The W" - is the premier women's professional basketball league. It is composed of 12 teams, all based in the United States. The league was founded on April 22, 1996, as the women's counterpart to the National Basketball Association (NBA), and league play started in 1997. The regular season is played from May to September, with the All Star game being played midway through the season in July and the WNBA Finals at the end of September until the beginning of October.
Capital One Arena is an indoor arena in Washington, D.C. Located in the Chinatown section of the larger Penn Quarter neighborhood, the arena sits atop the Gallery Place rapid transit station of the Washington Metro. The arena was opened on December 2, 1997 as MCI Center but renamed to Verizon Center in 2006 when MCI was acquired by Verizon Communications and changed again to its current name in 2017.
The Continental Indoor Soccer League (CISL) was a professional indoor soccer league that played from 1993 to 1997.
Semi-professional sports are sports in which athletes are not participating on a full-time basis, but still receive some payment. Semi-professionals are not amateur because they receive regular payment from their team, but generally at a considerably lower rate than a full-time professional athlete. As a result, semi-professional players frequently have full-time employment elsewhere. A semi-pro player or team could also be one that represents a place of employment that only the employees are allowed to play on. In this case, it is considered semi-pro because their employer pays them, but for their regular job, not for playing on the company's team.
Morris Hiram "Red" Badgro was an American professional football and baseball player. He played as an end in the National Football League (NFL). He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1981.
Sports in the United States are an important part of the nation's culture. Historically, the national sport has been baseball. However, in more recent decades, American football has been the most popular sport in terms of broadcast viewership audience. Basketball has grown into the mainstream American sports scene since the 1980s, with ice hockey and soccer doing the same around the turn of the 21st century.
Robert Alfred Wolff was an American radio and television sportscaster.
Wilbur Francis "Pete" Henry was an American football player, coach, and athletic administrator. He was a charter inductee into both the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963.
John William Isaacs was a Panamanian-American professional basketball player. Born in Panama but raised in New York City, he was a member of the New York Renaissance, the Washington Bears, and various other teams.
Washington, D.C., has major league sports teams, popular college sports teams, and a variety of other team and individual sports. The Washington metropolitan area is also home to several major sports venues including Capital One Arena, RFK Stadium, Commanders Field, Audi Field, and Nationals Park.
Sports teams in Virginia include several professional teams, but no professional major-league teams. Virginia is the most populous U.S. state without a major professional sports league franchise playing within its borders, although two of the major-league teams representing Washington, D.C.—the NFL's Washington Commanders and NHL's Washington Capitals—have their practice facilities and operational headquarters in Northern Virginia.
Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) was the top-level professional women's soccer league in the United States. It began play on March 29, 2009. The league was composed of seven teams for its first two seasons and fielded six teams for the 2011 season, with continued plans for future expansion. The WPS was the highest level in the United States soccer pyramid for the women's game.
The Chicago Red Stars are a professional women's soccer club based in Bridgeview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. A founding member of the Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) league, they have played in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) since 2013.
Monumental Sports Network, formerly NBC Sports Washington, is an American regional sports network owned by Ted Leonsis through Monumental Sports & Entertainment. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the channel broadcasts regional coverage of sports events throughout the Mid-Atlantic, with a focus on professional sports teams based in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., as well as sports news and entertainment programming.
The Basketball Association of America (BAA) was a professional basketball league in North America, founded in 1946. Following its third season, 1948–49, the BAA absorbed most of National Basketball League (NBL) and rebranded as the National Basketball Association (NBA).
The West Chester Golden Rams represent West Chester University of Pennsylvania, which is located in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in intercollegiate sports. They compete in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) in NCAA Division II.
Seattle Reign FC is an American professional women's soccer team based in Seattle, Washington. Founded by Bill and Teresa Predmore in 2012, it was one of eight inaugural members of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). In 2020, OL Groupe, the parent company of French clubs Olympique Lyonnais and Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, became the team's majority owner and the team played as OL Reign from 2020 to 2023. Laura Harvey is the team's head coach; she led the team to two consecutive NWSL Shield wins in 2014 and 2015 and a third in 2022.