Rough Notes: The Expansion Franchise You've Never Heard of

The San Francisco Pioneers are finally reuniting!

Well, if you’ve been reading Rough Notes, you probably have heard of the Pioneers. But in case you’ve missed it, here’s the basic gist: decades before the Golden State Valkyries, in 1979, the San Francisco Pioneers became arguably the most successful expansion franchise in the Women’s Professional Basketball League (or WBL). (During the Pioneers inaugural season, they even made a playoff run before losing in the semifinals, just narrowly, to the New York Stars!) But while it may have been one of the strongest franchises in the first pro women’s basketball league in the U.S., the Pioneers folded alongside the WBL in 1981, after just two seasons. As former Pioneers Musiette McKinney has so poignantly said about the way her team ended when the WBL fell apart: “We never said goodbye to our city, where it all started.”

Finally, in 2025, that is changing.

Read My Latest On The Pioneers

• I wrote last week about how, for the first time, the San Francisco Pioneers are reuniting in the Bay Area, on Monday, July 14th at the Golden State Valkyries vs. Phoenix Mercury game! Check out my latest feature, written from months of research and reporting, out now at The Next.
  
  

• In the piece, you’ll read all about how the reunion came to be: from the Golden State Valkyries honoring women’s basketball history in a new, potentially transformative way, to the insistence by former Pioneers players that they, too, be included our celebration of the WNBA’s growth today. These are the women who boldly embraced pro basketball as their own, who defied mainstream misogyny and racism that threatened to derail them every step of the way. They truly paved the way to make women’s basketball the powerful, disruptive force it has become.

• By the way, stay tuned for a full schedule of Pioneers reunion-related events in the Bay, July 13-15. Hope to see you there.

Featuring: Musiette “Moose” McKinney

• Multiple people have been helping to make this reunion happen, but there’s one in particular I want to make sure you know about: Musiette McKinney.

• You know how sometimes, there’s one player on a team who makes everyone else around them feel more alive? When there’s a lull, they bring energy no one else can, like a doctor capable of re-starting a heartbeat. They have sparkly connections with multiple teammates, and both the ability to get under their skin, matched with the rare listening skills to be trusted with secrets. They are true leaders, charting the way forward like a lifeline.

• On the San Francisco Pioneers, that was always Musiette, who her teammates call “Moose.” Moose really provided a spark plug to make this reunion possible: from speaking out with the rallying cry to return, to calling up her former teammates asking “you ready?” to persistently reaching out to the Golden State Valkyries from day one.

• By now, I’ve spoken with over eight former players on the team, all of whom got to play with Musiette, since she was one of only two players who remained on the Pioneers for both full seasons. “She was always trying to make world peace,” first year Pioneers’ reserve Anna Johnson likes to tell me. “She was tough,” Cardtie Hicks says. “But she never pounded on her chest. She would just hug us.” Often, whenever I ask a question to a former member of the Pioneers, they respond, “you know, you should just ask Musiette.”

• Musiette was the first person on the Pioneers I connected with (after cold emailing her!) in the fall of 2024, and our conversations were what made me want to write about the team in the first place. I loved how she described the Bay Area: “it had that quiet storm type cloudiness,” and what an good memory she had: “It's amazing that I know these names,” and how she spoke with infectious specificity about the experience: “When we came back to get our stuff, we stopped by Mrs. Field’s chocolate chip cookies. We said we’d eat one cookie every ten miles.”

• These conversations with Musiette also made me realize how often shallow nods to women’s basketball history leave out deep and mysterious and vibrant and dramatic stories we don’t yet know from women’s basketball players. This is just the beginning; there are so many more layers to unravel from women in the WBL: stories of fierce on-court rivalries and mid-season labor stoppages and complicated friendships and and unexpected betrayals. Many of these women, now in their 60’s and 70’s, are still active members in the women’s basketball community. But they won’t be alive to tell their stories forever.
  

Rare Photos of the Pioneers

• Below are more rare photos below of the San Francisco Pioneers that I’ve uncovered through my research, or received from former members of the team.