Sophie Cunningham has always stuck up for her people. Her sister, her teammates, Caitlin Clark (when the entire WNBA seemed to have taken out a hit job on her), and now she’s sticking up for something even bigger: women.
The basketball star turned viral sensation just threw the girls a bone, saying in a sprawling ESPN feature that she wants to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
There it is. Time for the WNBA to get big mad.
And of course the media will follow suit, deriding her indefinitely, like the Washington Post just did. Its latest headline reads: “WNBA player Sophie Cunningham won’t stop talking about trans athletes.”
No, my friends. You won’t stop talking about trans athletes.
She shouldn’t even have to say that “Biological men” don’t belong in a girl’s locker room. In fact, that used to be a redundant phrase, not a controversial one. But somebody had to say it aloud, because the feminists who were supposed to be saying it wandered off years ago, some chasing climate change, some chasing a different gender. So thank God for Sophie Cunningham. The 29-year old Indiana Fever guard, Missouri native, and Amazonian talent is apparently the last woman standing willing to state the obvious.
She’s not just the right messenger; she’s the perfect one.
😂🔥 Sophie Cunningham’s latest Instagram post is captioned: “I said what I said.”
She seriously gives ZERO f’s. 🤣 pic.twitter.com/a5QC3KgDss
— Gina Milan (@ginamilan_) July 23, 2026
This is who she’s always been. Growing up in Columbia, Missouri, Cunningham was clocking opposing players in rec-league before she hit double digits, avenging her older sister Lindsey the minute someone dared to even look at her funny. “If you let people walk all over you, they’re going to,” she says. “It’s just in my blood. You’re not gonna mess with my people.”
I like her. As an older sister, I can attest that claws don’t come out quicker than when your baby sissy gets hurt.
She carried that maternal instinct through four years at Mizzou, dragging a program that hadn’t sniffed the NCAA Tournament in nearly a decade back into it, four years running, and picked up a reputation for being seriously spunky along the way. South Carolina fans wanted her dead, literally. “Which is fine,” she said. Because like grandma, like mother, like daughter, she has thick skin.
She doesn’t care if she pisses people off.
This instinct came in handy last year when Jacy Sheldon poked Caitlin Clark in the eye, and Cunningham responded by putting Sheldon in a headlock on national television. She went viral for defending the only female WNBA player most people could name. Then did it again with a 22-second finger point and glare at DeWanna Bonner that turned into one of the biggest sports memes of the year.
It was glorious. The kind of silent fury I know intimately, the same look I give my sisters the second one of my tops goes missing off the hanger. No words, just accusation, thick enough to choke on. (We go from lovers to fighters real fast.)
One finger, twenty-two seconds, and an entire arena understood exactly what she meant. She never said a word. She didn’t have to. The point said it for her: touch my girl again and see what happens.
Clark has spent a season and a half getting hunted by bloodthirsty opponents while the league’s officiating crew developed a sudden case of Helen Keller the minute the star was fouled. Cunningham noticed, and Cunningham cared. So she did something about it. Now the same protective instinct that got Sheldon a headlock and Bonner a very long staredown has widened its aperture. She’s now going to bat for young girls and female athletes, and it means everything.
This woman became ubiquitous almost overnight. A woman who was a solid but unspectacular role player for six seasons in Phoenix is now an Adidas athlete with her own signature shoe dropping tomorrow, a Ring spokeswoman, a UFC ring girl, and reportedly one of the highest-earning names in the league that, until last year, most Americans couldn’t have named two players from. Her Google search numbers spiked 800% after the Sheldon situation. Her TikTok and Instagram followings are in the millions, and it happened because she was willing to be exactly, unapologetically herself in a landscape that has spent years punishing those who step out of line.
Which is what makes what she said in an ESPN profile, in the career sense, extremely dangerous. Telling the outlet that young girls in sports shouldn’t have to compete against biological men should be grounds for applause. Instead, it’s a liability.
But thankfully, she’s doubling down.
“I said what I said,” she told reporters before Wednesday’s game against Connecticut. “I think it’s kind of common sense. I think it’s really important to protect children, and that’s little girls who are also involved in that category. I stand on what I said.”
Bingo. Give her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Because that was brave.
Honestly, she has more to lose than almost anyone in the league right now: the shoe deal, the brand partnerships, the goodwill of a locker room culture, her spot on the team. She’s risking all of it for a sentence most Americans agree with, but almost no professional athlete will say.
The WNBA, meanwhile, has spent two years alternately ignoring and resenting the two players filling its arenas. It resents Clark for being too good and too popular. Now it gets to resent Cunningham for being too honest. Quite the business decision, icing out the only two names we know!
(It’s not personal. We didn’t know a single U.S. Men’s soccer player before the World Cup, either.)
What Sophie Cunningham is saying is correct. It should not be controversial. But women across the country are glad someone with as much to lose as she does is saying it regardless. Because for some reason, the liberal overlords and woke warriors would sacrifice safety and fairness for mental illness inclusion every time, if unchecked.
If we don’t stick up for each other, no one will. And Cunningham’s whole life has been proof that she doesn’t wait around for permission to protect her people. She didn’t wait for Sheldon. She didn’t wait for Bonner. She’s not going to wait for a press release from the league office, either.
Eat it, WNBA. Or you will go back to being just as unpopular as the World Cup before June.
.png)
.png)
