Courtney Vandersloot never really left Chicago.
When it was released in 2022Change was a necessity. The last two years with the New York Liberty have raised Vandersloot to a new level of competition. But part of her was still stuck on the sky, the team that drafted her in 2011, where she met his wife, won her first title and became the person and the player she is today.
And this year, Vandersloot is home – even if she knows that it will not be the same thing. At all.
No player remains from Sky’s list in 2022. The team has a new coach and new managing director. The sky called on new investors and inaugurated a new training center. And the team exploded in popularity due to the writing of stars Kamilla Cardoso and Angel Reese, selling Wintrust Arena throughout the 2024 season and Prepare to organize matches this season at the United Center For the first time in the history of the team.
This is what Vandersloot wanted. The guard tries to move forward, no return to a past version of itself. And The signature with the sky is a new startEven if it happens in a familiar place.
“Chicago has a big role – like a huge part – of my heart,” Vandersloot said in the gallery. “I have always been very aware of what was going on there because I want Chicago’s sky to succeed, whether I am there or not. But it’s another new place. It will never be the same thing – and it’s okay. “”
At the end of the 2024 season, Vandersloot knew she couldn’t stay in New York.
It was a difficult year. She spent almost a quarter of the season far from the freedom to be with her mother, Jan, who died in mid-June after a two-year battle with an advanced multiple myeloma. When Vandersloot returned, heavy with sorrow, she returned to her role as a starting leader. But things were different.
The 3 -point Vandersloot shooting fell to a career in career. His assists were also broken. And at the start of the playoffs, the Liberty discreetly put Vandersloot in favor of the 25 -year -old striker Leonie Fiebich, choosing to play without leader in the starting program.
It hurt. Even another WNBA title was not enough to compensate for the clear pendulum swing in the way in which freedom prioritizes Vandersloot.
Vandersloot did not know his role. She hated being a bench. And there is no good way to convince a starter – in particular that like Vandersloot, an All -Star five times with several records of WNBA Assisets – that the passage to the bench is the best path to go.
Liberty Sandy Brondello coach regularly congratulated Vandersloot for the humility with which she sailed on her changing role. But during the offseason, he became clear for Vandersloot that freedom no longer saw her as their initial leader.
“I always felt like I had a lot to give,” said Vandersloot. “I want to be on the ground, I want to play my strength and I want to be the player I have been in this league for a very long time. If I was not going to be able to be this player I wanted to be, I wanted to go elsewhere. »»
Vandersloot did not want his free agency decision to be motivated by nostalgia.
Of course, she missed Chicago and the sky. But Vandersloot left in 2022 for a reason. The team collapsed by its last season, both on the field and at the front office. The sky had become a place where Vandersloot felt that it could not grow up.
Vandersloot already knew what to expect from Managing Director Jeff PaglioccaWho had spent long hours in the gymnasium to forge a relationship with her and his wife, combined Quigley, in the last decade as an off -season coach. But it was the new coach Tyler Marsh who really convinced Vandersloot to return to Chicago.
Marsh insisted that there was even more to unlock in Vandersloot – even at 36 years old, even in 15th year in the League. As a coach of the first year of the WNBAMarsh thought that Vandersloot was the right person to write the next chapter for the franchise.
“I think he considers me the best version of myself,” said Vandersloot. “I can make people around me much better, but I have to be in a very good situation. Tyler created this.
Choosing a new house was not Vandersloot’s only decision. In join unrivaledVandersloot was focused on a priority: the growth of his game during the offseason.
There was nothing left in Europe, where she won three times for a foreign club at each off-season of 2011-23. Vandersloot did not want to stagnate. And she also needed to find a better intersane training diet.
After being forced to leave his longtime team, Ummc Ekaterinburg, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Vandersloot tried a few seasons in Turkey with Sopron and Fenerbahçe. But in 2024, she tried to rest during the offseason.
It didn’t work. Vandersloot is known to be a certified gym rat, a player who presents himself to train an hour earlier and gets up on match days. This type of singular concentration is not well associated with a solo training plan. His body was horrible at the start of the WNBA season – and it showed.
“The walks have been difficult for me in the past two years not playing abroad,” said Vandersloot. “I was really trying to keep my body really hard in shape without playing games. It was really difficult to grow. I felt like I was almost fighting.
Useless gave him a better balance. Vandersloot feels confident in its physical form: strong, well rested, sharp on the ball. Of course, hot weather in Miami hasn’t hurt.
“Being in Chicago in February will harm my joints,” joked Vandersloot.
But on the ground, unequaled was a different challenge. Vandersloot had never seriously participated in a 3 format against 3 and she quickly learned that it was a difficult frame for a passing leader.
The opponents opted for a heavy defense or using the falling coverage to extinguish the crossing routes. And with only two teammates available, Vandersloot could not rely on the facilitating psyche which has always motivated its style of play.
“I had to find my score mentality first,” said Vandersloot. “You have to attack and try to score, because if you are looking to make the additional pass – that’s not.”
The unparalleled season of Vandersloot ended last weekend after his club, Mist, was eliminated from affirmations in the playoffs. The objective of the guard is now firmly on the creation of a new culture in Chicago centered on young stars Cardoso and Reese – The couple in the front area who played a crucial role in recruiting the sky of Vandersloot.
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For each force that Vandersloot spotted on the duo as an adversary – the surprising speed of Cardoso, the defensive instincts of Reese – she also saw a series of improvements which she hoped to instill in the two recruits.
Vandersloot wants to be the veteran who rewards the high seals of Cardoso with lobs at the top of Cardoso and Built more effective finishing possibilities for reese by the edge. She wants to teach the two big ones how to maximize their screening angles to find folds in the defense, exploiting the opposing defenses with an incessant attack by Pick-And-Roll.
There is work to do. Marsh and Pagliocca have passed the off -season Storage on 3 -point shooters that can counter spacing problems Inherent in any list centered on two large. And it will be up to Vandersloot to forge balance in the offense.
But Vandersloot never worried about work. This is the new challenge that she took up – mold the next era of Sky players in a really competitive list.
“Being able to play with two young future superstars, as a leader, I loved what they both brought,” said Vandersloot. “I think they could help me as much as I feel like I can help them.”
Vandersloot knows that this year will be different. The sky tries to change for the best – and Vandersloot hopes to change with his team.
But some things have never changed. Fans. The promenade of the changing rooms at the Wentrust Arena courtyard, the Depaul jersey of his wife hanging on the rafters. The memory of the transport of the WNBA trophy through Millennium Park.
And Vandersloot? Even after two years, she thinks that the sky already knows exactly what to expect their new starting game leader.
“I had been there for so long,” said Vandersloot. “I was so young at the start, then I grew up and I became an adult there. It’s been a few years and I’m a little older now, I suppose, but I always feel the same thing. I still have a lot to give. It will be the same old slut.
