The Seattle Reign were the first professional women’s basketball team in Seattle, playing from 1996 to 1998 in the American Basketball League (ABL). The ABL was founded in 1996, with Seattle as one of eight founding teams. The league collapsed partway through the 1998 season under the financial pressure of competing with the rival Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), which was better funded and had higher average game attendance than the ABL. Many ABL players transferred to the WNBA, including several Reign players who later played for Seattle’s WNBA team, the Storm.

This photo shows Debbie Sporcich (then Debbie Osburn), a Pasco, Washington native, after she joined the Seattle Reign for the 1996-1997 season. The 6-foot 4-inch forward was a Hall of Fame basketball player for Pasco High School and University of Oregon, and played professionally in Belgium, Italy, and Spain before joining the Reign. In 2008, Sporcich was inducted into the Central Washington Sports Hall of Fame.

Caption information source: "Reign sign a replacement for Lacy" by Dan Raley, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 31, 1996, p. D1.