Love can change the world. That has been the rallying cry of Revolution Now since we started in 2021. We operate with the belief that if you share your story with others that people will feel it and want to help in creating healing. The act of hearing another person’s story; whether it’s Keith Gattie’s shirt that calls for reconciliation, Noah Wright’s shirt that calls for equity or Graham Woods’ shirt that calls for understanding, everytime we really hear someone, we step in the direction of Revolutionary change. When we choose to wear those stories and support non-profits that amplify their goals we help create the world we want.
This week we released a shirt that calls us to challenge gender norms. This shirt honours the legacy of Maya Spence, a passionate young athlete who was a strong advocate for the advancement of women. Her Mom and I recently talked about how Maya would’ve loved seeing the NCAA March Madness this year with Caitlyn Clark, Dawn Staley’s squad and the crazy hype that came with it. For women like us who have grown up playing basketball, all of that brings the big feels. Basketball is like breathing for me, it’s how I’ve come to understand the world and my place in it. My Mom was an all-star guard in the mid-1960’s when guards couldn’t cross half because people didn’t think that women could play fast. I played in the mid-1990’s before there was a WNBA and CBS only broadcast three women’s games a year. Maya Spence grew up after that, her first club team started in 2009. She was a girl who felt the magic of basketball from the moment she hit the court. She got after it on defense and wasn’t afraid to rebound from the guard spot. More importantly, she was a great teammate who enjoyed pool parties and practical jokes with her teammates. She was on a team that won their tier in the Provincial championships after a power outage in the final. Maya and her friends knew how to roll with the unexpected, they knew they could give everything they had in every situation and that they had people who they loved and who loved them back. Those bonds and beliefs are invaluable. What basketball gives people, specifically girls, is powerful. In a world where women are too often encouraged to defer to be liked, basketball gives us the space and the experience to be loved for being bold, for being aggressive and for being unabashedly invested in our goals and in each other. Maya Spence was an invested person. She was invested in sport and in life and she was deeply loved by her teammates. In this shirt, we seek to share Maya’s love and how much we loved her. From the sale of each shirt, $5.00 will go towards creating the Maya Spence Scholarship at Four Point basketball. This scholarship will gift young girls a free week of basketball camp. In doing this, we wish to share all the goodness that basketball gave us. We hope that the recipient will develop strength, voice and lifelong bonds like Maya had. We hope that the recipient will define her own success in the world and that what she learns will transfer off of the court and into all she does. Those of us who grew up in women’s basketball, know that this is the real beauty of our game. We will keep cheering for Caitlyn Clark and our Canadian girl, Aaliyah Edwards, but we will also keep cheering for the millions of us women who work in various fields, in many parts of the world, who know that the game lives in us too. We cheer knowing that this is the beauty of the game. That the logo threes are symbolic of all the ways women are stretching boundaries and expectations in the world. That is the way our love changes the world. This is something girls in basketball have known for a long time. Maya would love to see the world starting to understand. Today, help us celebrate Maya and her love which continues to change the world.