Among many other accomplishments, Sabrina Ionescu won a gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
All that winning, all those championships. North Coast Section, Northern California, Pac-12 Conference and WNBA crowns. Oh, and the Olympic gold medal.
Of all Sabrina Ionescu’s massive range of basketball achievements, her ability to unite and raise the level of teammates, forming championship squads, might be her greatest.
And soon, on June 26 specifically, she’ll bring together the entire city of Orinda, and surely outside communities well beyond Lamorinda.
The difference in this case is that all will converge to honor the 2016 Miramonte High School graduate and current New York Liberty star. But, by doing so, she will likely lead to the greater good, a victory of sorts, for civic, community and school pride.
And in the process of doing that, she might pull off the improbable – brightening and refurbishing a dilapidated but doting 71-year-old old gym – one that is now named after her.
Talk about raising the roof.
If anyone can do it, it is the four-time WNBA All-Star and two-time Wooden Award winner.
“Celebrating a Champion: The Sabrina Ionescu Gymnasium” event, slated for Friday, June 26, will honor not just one of the nation’s best basketball players, but a global megastar who has done far more than just put Miramonte on the map.
*Ionescu was the first female to launch a unisex signature shoe with Nike.
*She is the WNBA edition cover athlete for NBA 2K24.
*She is part-owner of the Bay FC, a National Women’s Soccer League team.
*She was a featured speaker at one of the most viewed worldwide streams in the history of
online video content, the memorial service for Kobe and Gianna Bryant at the Staples Center.
Clearly, the 28-year-old Ionescu has helped push women’s basketball and women’s sports to new levels, but she also led the Liberty to a 2024 WNBA title and earned a gold medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“To have the name of a living, breathing legend on that wall will be incredibly powerful,” said her former Miramonte coach Kelly Sopak. “And something the entire student body can take pride in for generations to come.”
It became official in March by a unanimous vote from the Acalanes Union High School District, making it one of few gyms in the country named after a woman.
The push for Ionescu’s name to be attached to the Miramonte gym was started by Sopak’s daughter Lauren, now Vice President of Event Operations for Nike Tournament of Champions.
“It’s difficult to fully articulate what I feel and just how proud I am of (Ionescu) and everything she has done with her platform,” said Kelly Sopak. “The naming of the gym is incredibly well deserved and represents more than just Sabrina and her impact and legacy here in Orinda. It also says a great deal about this community and what it values.”
Sharing her day so generously with the community speaks to Ionescu’s values, said outgoing Miramonte principal Ben Campopiano.
“I wasn’t principal when she was here, but everyone we talked to while she was here spoke about her positive involvement in everything she did on campus,” said Campopiano, a former baseball player and coach at Northgate-Walnut Creek. “She was spirited well beyond the basketball court and involved with activities and volunteer work and making Miramonte a better place.”
Ten years later, that hasn’t changed, said the Ionescu celebration coordinator Emily Allen, the executive director of the Orinda Network for Education and MatsNation, the Miramonte Alumni Association.
When plans for the event began in early April, Ionescu and her SI20 Foundation team were on every Zoom call, figuring out ways to make things easiest and most accommodating for all.
Allen, who had never met Ionescu, didn’t expect the three-time Nancy Lieberman Award-winner or her husband Hroniss Grasu, a former NFL lineman, to be so “invested.” She found it refreshing and revealing.
“We’ve talked every other week,” Allen said. “You would figure someone at her level might not be so involved. But you can tell this is very important to her. She and (Grasu) care. They’re very community-based.”
Especially for the kids.
The celebration will start with Ionescu and the SI20 Foundation putting on a basketball clinic for 60 Orinda youth in the gym scheduled at 4 p.m. (Pre-registration is required.)
At the same time a family-friendly, carnival-like festival with games and booths will take place outside the gym.
The clinic and festival are scheduled to last until approximately 5:30 p.m., when a formal gym dedication ceremony will take place inside the gym.
“Sabrina is hoping to bring some teammates and coaches,” Allen said, noting the Liberty are in town to play the Golden State Valkyries at the Chase Center two nights later on June 28.
Following the gym dedication at 7 p.m. will be a cocktail/hors d’oeuvres reception at Moraga Country Club that will feature a silent auction offering up such things as WNBA, Liberty, Ionescu and Kobe Bryant ware and apparatus.
Allen said the final fanciful affair will be a perfect finish for Ionescu’s celebration and kickoff for a campaign by the school to raise money for the modernization of the gym.
With AUHSD facing significant budget cuts, taxpayer funding for such improvements is a full court heave. But Campopiano and Sopak are confident that Ionescu’s inspiration and vision will lead to a gym worthy of her name.
“(Ionescu) wants it upgraded not because her name is on it but because she wants future students and players and coaches to benefit from it,” Campopiano said. “From PE classes to the basketball, volleyball, cheerleading teams, to assemblies and rallies and meetings, the gym is used nonstop. This is the perfect opportunity to not only rename the gym but do right by the students and Sabrina to freshen it up.”
Sopak, who went 541-91 in 26 seasons as coach at Northgate, Miramonte and Carondelet by seeing the entire court and carving up defenses, was much more direct.
“The gym itself will need a lot of work,” he said. “In its current state, it is not yet worthy of Sabrina’s name. But this community has always risen to the challenge, and I’m confident the facility will improve over time through fundraising efforts and community support. Eventually, it will become a facility the school, district, and entire community can truly be proud of.”
