Best Fans Forever!!!

Ask anyone who's been a multi-year season ticketholder for any sports team and she'll probably tell you that one of the most interesting aspects of being an STH is the experience of connecting with the other fans around you.

It's a weird phenomenon. You buy season tickets, often with one or more friends or family members, and through the luck of the draw, you are assigned to a side, section and row with other fans you may never have laid eyes on before. But except for the unlucky few who immediately call their ticket reps and beg for a new seat assignment, chances are that by season's end there's a special kind of bond formed between you and your nearby seatmates. For however long -- or short -- the season lasts, we are all BFFs! With some of our BFFs we may form real friendships, but mostly, after the last game (or team banquet or team event), we won't have any contact with each other until next season. But after months and months, when that first game of the new season finally rolls around, we see each other again . . . and immediately the smiles break out, we hug, and we exchange all the how-ya-beens, great-to-see-yous of old friends excited to finally be back in touch. Definitely weird. But weird good.

So with the Mystics season about to kick off this Wednesday with a lunch-time (11:30 AM) pre-season contest against the New York Liberty, we're looking forward not only to seeing what the Mystics training camp roster looks like on the court, but also looking forward to seeing a few of our BFFs in their seats.

If you've been reading this blog, or anything else about the Mystics, you've undoubtedly heard the unfortunate news that ankle surgery will sideline Alana Beard for the entire 2010 WNBA season. Bummer! What you may or may not have heard, however, is that AB's status (injured but still under contract) means that Washington will be playing with a 10-person roster throughout the regular season. There's no extra roster spot for GM Angela Taylor and Coach Julie Plank to play with. This means that every new player added to the 2010 Mystics will displace a former member of the old team. It's a tough way to make a living, that's for sure.

We expect the final roster will include one or more new faces. There's no doubt that Angela and Julie are pretty excited about some of the young talent they've brought into training camp. Today, the Mystics launched a new every-Friday video feature on their website called Inside Access. The BCs watched Episode 1 this morning -- about Draft Day in Washington's "war room" -- and we thought it was great! Think of it as a shorter, Mystics version of Under-the-Shell . . . a behind-the-scenes (mostly) unscripted look at the team and the organization. When you watch the war room reaction to San Antonio's selection of Stanford's Jayne Appel -- which left FSU's Jacinta Monroe still on the board -- you just know that what Angela told the press was true, that "50-cent" Monroe was the appel apple of her eye all along.

We expect that at Wednesday's game we'll see plenty of the minutes spread among the new players auditioning for a spot on the roster. With the very difficult assignment of trimming the team to 10 active players, evaluation of talent may take precedence over coming away with a (somewhat meaningless) pre-season win. So the BCs plan to just grab a well-balanced midday meal of popcorn and diet coke, say hey to any of our BFFs who can make it to the Phone Booth at that early hour on a workday, check out the new Mystics talent, catch our first glimpse of Cappie Pondexter in a Liberty uniform, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. Go Mystics!

And a footnote: on Tuesday, May 11th, at 6 PM, the Mystics will scrimmage against the Polish National Team at St. John's High School in a game open to the public. That will give all of us a second opportunity to see the pre-season Mystics in action.