When Grace Berger was starring for the Indiana University women’s basketball team a couple of years ago, she didn’t need a passport.

A native of Louisville, and spending her days hanging out in Bloomington or traveling to Big Ten communities in the region, pretty much the closest Berger got to a foreign border may have been an Internet click on the coronation of King Charles III.

Until this past off-season when the second-year Fever guard spent three months playing pro ball in Spain for the experience and to sharpen her game.

 

Freedman

“I’d never been outside of the Kentucky-Indiana area and the Midwest,” Berger said.

Berger said playing the pro game in Spain was educational because of the physicality and how some teammates and opponents were “really skilled, who had been pros for 10 or 15 years.”

The WNBA season, scheduled over the spring and summer, runs when high school, college and other pro leagues are on break. Both for financial reasons and playing opportunities, members of league teams have regularly played for additional teams around the world.

Over the last 30 years, professional basketball has gained a stronger foothold across the planet. The NBA is televised in nearly 200 countries – now. It is only since the 1992 Summer Olympics, when the all-time glittery all-star team featuring Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and others represented the United States and was termed the Dream Team, that the sport has truly expanded wildly internationally.

Now it is routine for top players from other nations to find spots on NBA rosters. That is also true for the WNBA, and also for American players on WNBA teams like the Fever for players to have international links.

This Fever team has guard Kristy Wallace, who played for Baylor, but is from Australia, and the intriguing 6-foot-4 Temi Fagbenle. Fagbenle has British roots and is of Nigerian descent. She attended Harvard for a few years, transferred to Southern Cal, was part of the British Olympic team in 2012, and played in the WNBA 2017-2019 with Minnesota before focusing on European ball, including for the London Lions. Unlike Berger, apparently Fagbenle has always needed a passport.

Forward Victaria Saxton, a former player for South Carolina, a third-round Fever draft pick in 2023, played professionally in Belgium.

For these young women, besides honing their basketball abilities, they tried to hone their tourist instincts and see things they had never seen before – and maybe eat some new things. Someone suggested hopefully Saxton ate and enjoyed Belgian waffles.

It can very much be a stranger-in-a-strange land experience for a player arriving in a foreign country where English is not the primary language and where the environment is different from their past. The 6-foot-2 Saxton grew up in Rome, Georgia.

Saxton said initially, “I was lost.” That changed when the universal language of basketball took over. “My teammates made me feel at home. I got to see a lot of things. It was a great experience.”

NaLyssa Smith, out of Baylor, was the Fever’s top draft pick in 2022 and is a 6-4 forward who spent time playing ball in Turkey. A native of Texas, Smith was a high school star in San Antonio where she was liable to eat more turkey on Thanksgiving and Christmas than ever think of visiting the country.

Smith played for Galatasaray of Istanbul in the Turkish Women’s Basketball League.

“It was cool from an historic standpoint,” Smith said.

Veteran guard Erica Wheeler, who grew up in South Florida and played for Rutgers, also played in Turkey, but played three seasons in the early 2020s in Poland, where she made an impact on her club team BC Polkowice.

Sometimes a WNBA player will dabble with overseas competition for one short season and that will be it. Wheeler’s polish ties run deeper.

Poland, she said, “is my second home. I love Poland. Poland loves me.”

Few players’ life stories rival Fever newcomer forward Katie Lou Samuelson’s. Samuelson, who turns 27 in mid-season, was a top player at Connecticut where she was part of an NCAA champion. In the WNBA, she has played for the Chicago Sky, Dallas Wings, Seattle Storm and Los Angeles Sparks. In recent years, Samuelson has played several seasons for a team in Spain.

Chosen for a U.S. Olympic team spot for the 2020 games, Samuelson dropped out because she contracted COVID-19. Married in 2023, Samuelson did not play last season because she was pregnant.

Admitting it might be a bit to ask so soon, Samuelson hopes bringing her nine-month-old daughter Aliya to practice with the Fever rubs off.

“To be in this atmosphere, to be around all these strong women,” Samuelson said.

Samuelson did note for the moment more important than Aliya picking up Polish words, it is a higher priority to obtain some Fever baby gear for her to be properly outfitted at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.