Save Women's Sports Rally Hits Its First Non-Fever Game, Gets Outnumbered by Trans Rights Counterprotesters in San Francisco

Since Sophie Cunningham's comments to ESPN in July sparked rallies trailing the Indiana Fever through Seattle, Portland and Minneapolis, the "Save Women's Sports" movement showed up Wednesday at a game that had nothing to do with Cunningham or the Fever at all.

The rally outside Chase Center in San Francisco, ahead of the Golden State Valkyries hosting the Minnesota Lynx, was the first of its kind at a non-Fever game, according to Fox News. It didn't go the way organizers wanted.

A crowd of pro-trans counterprotesters showed up in larger numbers than the women's sports advocates, according to both Fox News and Yahoo Sports. Family rights attorney Erin Friday, who attended, told Fox News Digital that eight or nine women, mostly lesbians and mostly Democrats or former Democrats by her account, were surrounded by a group yelling profanities and telling them to leave. Friday said the confrontations often started with attempts at conversation before quickly devolving into name calling.

Yahoo Sports, citing writer Aaditya Krishnamurthy, framed it as the "Save Women's Sports" side getting "outnumbered at their own protest," and noted that trans rights advocates have pointed out there are currently zero trans athletes in the WNBA and no known prospects entering the league soon. This entire fight is being waged over a hypothetical.

What the coaches said

Both head coaches were asked directly about the rally and neither engaged the substance of the argument.

Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, who wore a "Trans kids belong" shirt during the Aug. 2 game against Cunningham and the Fever, told reporters the movement is "a talking point that people are buying into" and said critics need to "educate themselves further." She didn't address the specific concern Cunningham and others have raised, that biological males retain physical advantages after puberty regardless of hormone therapy.

Valkyries coach Natalie Nakase said there's "too much hate speech" in sports right now and urged people to "lead with love."

Neither coach cited data. Neither engaged with the substance of the biological-advantage argument that underpins the entire movement. That's a pattern going back to Reeve's Aug. 2 comments in Minneapolis, where she called the issue a "human's rights issue" and said "every kid has a right to sports," according to CBS News and the LA Times.

The actual argument nobody's coach is answering

Cunningham's position, as she's stated it repeatedly, isn't a blanket attack on trans people. It's a specific claim: "I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men," she told ESPN in July. She's called it "common sense" and said she doesn't hate the trans community.

That's a mainstream position. A 2025 Gallup poll found roughly two-thirds of American adults want athletes competing based on sex at birth, according to CBS News. It's not a fringe view being manufactured by cable news, whatever Reeve's "talking point" framing implies.

On the other side, Kat Rohn of OutFront Minnesota told CBS News the political rhetoric is "seeking to ban kids regardless of age, regardless of biology, regardless of medical interventions at every level of play," calling it "both wrong and unfair." Rohn's point that there's a meaningful difference between youth sports and professional competition is fair and often gets flattened in the shouting match.

Both things can be true: there are currently no trans athletes in the WNBA, making this fight largely symbolic at the pro level right now. And the underlying policy debate over youth and amateur sports, where the numbers are still small but not zero, remains genuinely contested. NCAA leadership said in 2024 that fewer than 10 trans athletes were on record out of more than 530,000 student-athletes, according to CBS News.

Where this stands legally

In June, the Supreme Court cleared the way for states to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls' and women's sports, according to CBS News. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has kept his state's policy of letting students compete according to their gender identity, and the Trump administration is now suing Minnesota and the Minnesota State High School League, alleging the policy violates Title IX. That lawsuit is unresolved.

What actually happened at the game

Buried under the protest coverage: an actual basketball game got played. None of the sources here reported the final score or details of Wednesday's Valkyries-Lynx matchup, only the rally outside it.

The unresolved question is whether the movement's expansion beyond Fever games signals it's becoming a fixture at WNBA arenas generally, or whether Wednesday's numbers, outnumbered and reportedly harassed according to attorney Erin Friday, mean it stalls out once it's no longer tied to Cunningham specifically. The WNBA league office has not issued a statement on the Chase Center incident as of this writing.