Jacksonville Waves ride crest of women’s sports investment

Women’s pro basketball will return to Florida this weekend when the Jacksonville Waves tip off in the UPSHOT League.

The inaugural season for the four-team league begins this weekend when the Waves host the Charlotte Crown on Friday night inside VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena.

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Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m. A fan festival outside the arena starts at 5.

UPSHOT arrives as women’s professional sports witness a renaissance in public attention, game attendance and sponsor investment.

No place like home

Grand Park native Rennia Davis says the ability to showcase her basketball development in her hometown is very big deal.

“For me, it’s meant a lot. But, I think it’s going to mean more to the other girls that are coming up in the city, the other girls that are coming up in the area” Davis says. “When they can see it, and they can feel it, it’s more tangible. It’s more realistic now.”

Since Davis helped Ribault High win the Dick’s Sporting Goods High School Nationals in 2016, she has signed with the University of Tennessee and earned her a degree in hotel, restaurant and tourism management from the Knoxville school.

Davis was selected ninth overall in the 2021 WNBA Draft. Professionally, Davis has competed in Australia, Turkey, Mexico, Poland and elsewhere.

“I think it’s important to be realistic, also, about the fact that every girl is not going to make it to the WNBA,” Davis says. “But, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have the opportunity to play professional basketball. This is showing the girls right here in the city ‘Hey, we got all these girls here, all these great professional athletes, you can also do that.’”

Opportunities have expanded for women in sports since Davis was named Florida’s Miss Basketball in 2017.

‘Everyone watches women’s sports’

Bank of America Institute projected investment in women’s sports will grow by $2.5 billion by the end of the decade.

Women’s basketball has been at the vanguard.

Bank of America Institute reported this spring that in 2024 ticket sales in the WNBA increased 48% and merchandise sales increased 600% from 2023.

ESPN announced last month that its women’s college basketball viewership for the 2025-26 regular season was its highest in more than 15 years and a 19% increase from the 2025 season.

Jacksonville has been a beneficiary of the broader commitment to women’s sports. The Waves will arrive less than 12 months after Sporting Club Jacksonville launched a fully professional women’s pro soccer team.

Sporting Jax and the Jacksonville Waves have both launched with local talent on their rosters.

“Without basketball, I would not have seen 90% of the places that I’ve seen,” Davis says. “I’ve been to almost every state in America, and I’ve been to so many different countries that I didn’t even know existed. I’ve just enjoyed the experience.

“I’ve been able to meet people, meet myself in a different way, learn, grow. … Seeing the Northside for 18 years, and then going to Knoxville, Europe, then Australia and all these places, I just never knew some of this stuff existed. Basketball has given me an opportunity that I think nothing else would have given me.”

Zawyer Sports & Entertainment has owned men’s professional sports teams in Florida for nearly a decade — including the Jacksonville Icemen. Its CEO, Andy Kaufmann, has long spoken about the need for similar opportunities for women’s sports.

Zawyer owns the UPSHOT League. One of its first hires was to bring in Donna Orender, a former WNBA commissioner and longtime Northeast Florida resident, as UPSHOT commissioner.

“For me, the journey towards opening night this Friday for UPSHOT began six years ago when it became clear to me that young girls were not given the same opportunity to view their dreams of playing the sport they love professionally as realistic of a dream (or) goal that would otherwise be for young boys with those same dreams,” Kaufmann says in a statement to Jacksonville Today.

“That is when the idea of UPSHOT was born. To be just 48 hours away from tipping off in front of sold-out crowds in Jacksonville and Greensboro (and eight or nine days away from the same in Savannah and Charlotte) is goosebump-worthy.”

This week, Orender says, more than 40 players in the UPSHOT League have spent time on a WNBA roster or competed as a training camp invitee. She says the growth of women’s sports happens in incremental steps.

“It’s about growing the game, it’s about uplifting communities,” Orender says. “And, you want to do it where it matters most to you. It’s usually where you live or where you play or where they love you most. … We like to say the UPSHOT League is a league of opportunity. It’s an opportunity on the court, it’s an opportunity on the sidelines for all of our coaches. It’s an opportunity in our front offices in every, single market.”

In its 2025 Sports Trends Report, Neilsen noted that supporting women’s sports is no longer the right thing to do, but a business imperative. The Neilsen report found that women are not only fueling the growth of women’s sports leagues and teams, but have a buying power that can bring new sponsorships.

Hoop dreams

Point guard Ariel Hearn will captain the Waves this weekend.

On the eve of the league’s inaugural game, Hearn expressed personal gratitude for her basketball predecessors.

“It’s definitely a privilege and an honor,” Hearn says. “It definitely makes me realize how far I have come in my journey to be a captain of a professional team. It’s something I’ve always aspired to be. To be here, I don’t know if I can say I manifested it, but I know I’ve dreamed it.”

Over the last decade Hearn’s basketball odyssey has taken her to Iceland, Germany and within multiple women’s basketball leagues in the United States.

“One thing about this group is that every single one of us has a redemption story,” Hearn says. “We’ve all been places where we’ve either been cut or we’ve felt undervalued. We felt like what we gave maybe wasn’t appreciated or wasn’t wanted in certain places or times in our career. So, we are all here to up our shot.”

Waves head coach Jessica Bogia says basketball is an intimate community where connections can be forged and maintained for decades. Some of those are what brought the former Jacksonville University assistant back to the River City.

“I’m so thankful this group believed in this vision that I was able to put forth from a recruiting standpoint, but also the vision that Donna and Taj (McWilliams-Franklin, vice president of basketball operations) have laid with the Upshot League,” Bogia says. “I’m just super excited to get on the court on Friday.”