Crowds that showed up to watch Val Ackerman play her college ball at the University of Virginia were, in her words, “generously microscopic.”
It was a different story Wednesday evening as Ackerman, now the president of the Women’s Basketball Association, delivered the keynote address for the fifth-annual Women in Sports Business Symposium in front of approximately 200 interested audience members.
Ackerman discussed the challenges and benefits of the ongoing development of the WNBA and how the league’s success reflects the increasing availability of positions for women in sports.
“The opportunities for women to work in sports are truly expanding,” Ackerman said. “A lot of jobs out there are really exciting. So if you have a certain skill, I can promise you that there’s almost certainly a sports application to that skill.”
Some standout local athletes were among those gathered to hear Ackerman speak. The Oregon women’s basketball team’s point guard, Pacific-10 Conference Player of the Year Shaquala Williams, was there.
Ackerman’s “the woman,” said Williams, a junior-to-be. “To get the opportunity to meet her and make a good impression on her, that can only bode well for me in a couple of years.”
Also in attendance was Katy Polansky, a South Eugene High School student who is already one of the top javelin throwers in the nation and who bypasses several full-ride scholarships offer that Ackerman talked about in order to walk onto the Ducks’ basketball team as a freshman next season.
Polansky was one of four women given awards prior to Ackerman’s speech, accepting the high school athlete of the year honor.
“I’m really appreciative to everyone who helped me out the whole way through,” Polansky said, “and obviously Warsaw program for putting this on. It was an evening filled with things I wanted to hear.”
What they heard was Ackerman’s account of how women’s roles — not just as athletes, but in positions ranging from accounting and medicine to sports marketing — have expanded since she was a wannabe cheerleader in junior high school.
“People are sometimes surprised to learn that I’m a frustrated cheerleader,” Ackerman said. “When I was in seventh grade, my school had no organized sports for girls, the only thing that they had was the cheerleading squad. It was either that or nothing. But I got cut. It was devastating — and probably life altering.
“I vowed that from that point I would try to be associated with something where women were the stars.”
After a prolific college career at Virginia, a one-year stint of professional play overseas, and then eventually her “dream job” as a staff attorney for the NBA, Ackerman now oversees the four-year-old women’s league, which has exceeded expectations, Ackerman said. The league averages more than 10,000 fans per game for both of the past two season and drew more than 2 million fans total last summer.
The WNBA’s highest-ranking official correlated the WNBA’s success with the continuing saga of women’s empowerment.
“The WNBA is part of the bigger story,” Ackerman said. “I wouldn’t in any way compare the WNBA to the women’s suffrage movement; I’m not that immodest. But I don’t believe that it is a stretch to view the progression of women’s sports as an important part of the progression of women’s rights in this country.”