Sandy Brondello is just as excited as we are
The Toronto Tempo’s inaugural head coach turned down two offers from other WNBA teams. She must really like us!
Toronto basketball fans—and those of us who generally like to see our teams win—were enlivened last month when rumours swirled about Sandy Brondello joining the Toronto Tempo as head coach.
Considered one of the best coaches in WNBA history, Brondello has made the playoffs every year of her 13 seasons in head coaching positions, and she won the 2024 championship with the New York Liberty.
Now that she’s confirmed to be coming to Toronto, we can more confidently celebrate the likelihood of championships in our future. Speaking with Marie Claire, Brondello said the optimism is mutual. “I just feel renewed energy—excited to start building a team from scratch in a great city and a new country,” she said. “But while we’ll be a Toronto team, we’re also a Canada team, and that excites me.”
Brondello confirmed that she turned down offers from the Seattle Storm and the Dallas Wings in order to sign on with Toronto. “I just felt excited to build something from scratch with the really good people in a really great city, and with the whole country behind [us]. How cool is that?”
The Toronto Tempo will begin playing next year.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
