“Sobriety is not 
a health trend. 
It’s a terrifying, 
enlightening, and 
rebellious act in a 
world that puts 
drinking on a pedestal.”

First of all, congratulations to the Golden State Valkaries for their amazing performance in the WNBA Finals. To win a championship in only the second year of a franchise’s existence is unprecedented. Just as the Giants, 49ers, and Warriors brought the greater San Francisco Bay Area community together through their championship seasons, the Valkaries, too, have won the hearts and admiration of locals in Northern California. Saturday night’s game was an event that will be remembered for years to come.

With that said, I just want to touch on a topic which has been on my mind for many years. The tradition of championship teams celebrating their victory with alcohol has existed throughout my lifetime, though the way this has been done has changed through the years.

In the early 1950s, championship hockey and baseball teams included drinking beer and/or champagne at team dinners. In 1957, the Milwaukee Braves are credited with the first documented example of using champagne in a clubhouse celebration after the World Series. Then, at the conclusion of the 1960 World Series, the Pittsburgh Pirates popularized the full-scale champagne-spraying shower, turning it into a regular locker room ritual that later spread to other professional sports in America.

The Golden State Valkaries have had a unique vibe throughout the season. They are disciplined. They’ve learned to focus on the game and not to be distracted by questionable calls by officials or any other uncontrollable element of the game. So I was hoping that their post-game celebration might also reflect that discipline. Sadly, that didn’t happen.

Professional athletes, like it or not, are role models for the community. It comes with the territory. As professional tennis player, Ben Shelton, once said, “As a professional athlete, it is a unique opportunity to impact people around you, and I think a big part of that is the way you show your personality on the court and off the court.”

It seems that many Americans have a difficult time celebrating anything, whether it’s a championship, an anniversary, a birthday, the start of a new year, or even the baptism of an infant, without including alcohol in the celebration — often an overabundance of alcohol.

I’m not willing to place the blame for this on professional athletes, but I do think that an opportunity was lost on Saturday night. I would have been so impressed if the Valkaries had flipped the script and demonstrated to the larger community that it was possible for a team to celebrate a championship without spraying champagne all over the locker room or drinking wine out of a bottle during a televised post-game interview. I would think that their on-the-court accomplishment would be reason enough to celebrate, and that they could do so without the enhancement of alcoholic beverages.

I’m not picking on the Valkaries here. This has been a concern of mine for many years, none of which involved women’s professional sports. It’s just that I’ve been so impressed with the Valkaries this year, most notably their commitment to discipline, that I thought this was an opportunity, a teachable moment, that they might seize.