Olivia Miles did not need years in the league to become a name that nearly two dozen young players in one school gym wanted to talk about. By the time the WNBA draft had passed last spring, Myles Moore’s 8- to 12-year-olds were already sending him clips and videos of Miles, treating her rookie arrival like something they needed to keep up with in real time.
That kind of attention is showing up because the WNBA is easier to watch than it used to be. Media deals struck over the past few years have made games more accessible, and Moore said that has helped young people see high-profile Lynx players such as Napheesa Collier, Courtney Williams and Miles much more often. Miles, who rocketed to stardom on the back of a standout rookie campaign, has also connected because she looks familiar off the court and easy to copy on it. Her No. 5 jersey became a regular sight at Target Center. T-shirts and yard signs carried silhouettes of her afro and Rec Specs. The Lynx even hosted a goggle giveaway in her honor.
Moore coaches at Community School of Excellence, a pre-K-12 Hmong language and culture school, alongside Alex Born. They handle the junior varsity and varsity girls and boys teams, both now in their second years, but the pull of women’s basketball reaches far beyond those squads. Moore, a long-time Lynx and Timberwolves fan, said the game has become a meeting point with children who may never have been around basketball before. “They started seeing her play, then everyone just started raving about her, just sending me clips, videos,” he said. “You’re sending me that, knowing that you can do that,” he added. “So let’s go out and maybe try and do it.”
That is where the enthusiasm runs into reality. Not every player in Moore’s gym is a longtime basketball follower, even as the hype around women’s basketball fuels his drills and his energy. Moore said coaching matters to him because it lets him pass the game down and stay in kids’ lives every day. “I started coaching just off of the love of the game and passing it down to the younger generation,” he said. “I feel like when I pour into a student or athlete, it fills my bucket just as much as it fills theirs.”
For now, Miles has become more than a breakout rookie for the Lynx. She is the player young athletes are pointing to when they want to know what they can look like, sound like and wear on a court of their own. The open question is how much of that early excitement becomes lasting participation once the clips, jerseys and signs fade into the background.
