Lisa Ketter-Marino, right, with former Dallas Wings player Kaela Davis
(Photo courtesy of Lisa Ketter-Marino)
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
Taffet@DallasVoice.com
Even though Paula Ketter-Marino was born in Fort Worth, she attended Duncanville High School, playing on the soccer team there. And after high school, she went on to play recreation league soccer.
At the time, that was as far as a woman could go in that sport — until 1985 when the Dallas Sting became the first national women’s soccer team, according to Ketter-Marino’s wife, Lisa. (Lisa said her wife goes by her initials “PK” but that “PK” actually stands for “penalty kick.”
“She loved the sport,” Lisa said of PK. “But during tryouts, she blew out her knee, and all of her dreams went up in smoke.”
At that time, especially, there were not a lot of opportunities for women in professional soccer, and, Lisa said, watching PK watch a soccer game was tough. “She’ll see all sides,” Lisa said, and would instinctively know what the players did wrong. “They should have done this,” she’d suggest.
Over the years, Lisa said, she and PK never had much opportunity to support a woman’s pro sports team, especially not a local women’s team — not, that is, until the Dallas Wings came along.
Finding the Wings helped PK reconcile her past, Lisa explained. “It brought back her love of women’s sports, [seeing] all these young, talented ladies on the court.”
Lisa said there some significant differences between men’s basketball and women’s basketball. For instance, the women play a faster, more technical game, and the women’s teams take fewer time outs. And there are fewer penalities.
The women’s game, Lisa said, is “fast break basketball.” And while the professional men play a more individualized game, “The women work better as a team,” she added.
Women’s pro basketball, Lisa said, is an “exciting game without all the dunks. Yes, we have women who dunk,” but the fun is watching the women work together.
So, Lisa and PK bought Dallas Wings season tickets and found themselves surrounded by a group of other season ticket holders who — to their delight but not really their surprise — they were surrounded by other lesbian couples who love the game.
Seated behind them, Lisa said, were a couple she described as a former military bronze star recipient and a phys-ed coach. Another of their new friends have a seven-year-old boy who is a phenomenal basketball player himself, she noted. “He learned because he’s been going to all the games,” Lisa said.
And among the people they met was team booster Pam Gerber who asked them to sit on the Champions of Change LGBTQ+ Committee.
“Our goal is to provide LGBTQ visibility within the Dallas Wings Community Foundation and the Wings organization and bring the Wings to the community,” Lisa explained.
The Dallas Wings Community Foundation is the charitable arm of the WNBA franchise. For the first event of the Champions of Change LGBTQ+ Committee, the Wings held the AmpliFair and Mixer last year at Sue Ellen’s for non-profit organizations to share information and resources. More events are planned for this season.
For Teacher Appreciation Week, the community foundation renovated a teacher’s lounge for an Arlington school while also holding a school supply drive and a sneaker drive for the students, and team members offered a basketball clinic for the middle school girls. That’s just the age when girls are most likely to drop out of sports, Lisa said.
Tonight, the Dallas Wings begin their final season playing in College Park Center in Arlington.
They’ll face the Minnesota Lynx.
Next year, the Wings move to Dallas to play in the Memorial Arena in the Dallas Convention Center. Their new venue has twice as many seats as their current home in Arlington. And the move comes just in time. Last season, for the first time, the Wings began selling out games.
Dallas Wings 2025 Amplifier & Mixer, hosted by Dallas Wings LGBTQ+ Champions of Change, happens Saturday, May 17, from 2-5 p.m. at Sue Ellen’s, 3014 Throckmorton St.