Lynx fandom extends beyond Minnesota’s borders

Bars and breweries across the Twin Cities will host watch parties Sunday night as the Lynx and Liberty vie for the WNBA championship in the fifth and final game of a nail-biting, competitive series.

Neighbors will gather. Long-distance friends will text updates throughout the game. At Riverview Theater in south Minneapolis, families will watch on the big screen with buckets of popcorn.

But loyal Lynx fans eagerly awaiting tipoff extend far beyond Minnesota’s borders. They seem to be everywhere — from California to North Carolina and every state in between (we see you, South Dakota). Because nowadays, “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports,” a T-shirt slogan more common than “Just Do It” for WNBA followers.

At 89, Edith Rylander said she’s been following the Lynx since their inaugural season — in the late 1900s, as kids say these days.

“It’s just a great pleasure to be able to watch any of our Minnesota teams, but especially the Lynx, who I have a special soft place in my heart for because of watching college and originally high school women’s basketball expand and get better and better and better” she said.

Rylander said that while the state’s other teams were “flaming out” over the years, not so the Lynx.

“My goodness, it’s just been a splendid, consistently watchable team over the years,” she said. “It’s been astounding.”

But it wasn’t until the Lynx reached the playoffs this year that Rylander could watch them. She lives outside the team’s TV broadcast coverage area. The poet and author recently moved from Grey Eagle, Minn., with her husband to a senior living community in Davidson, N.C., to be near her daughter.

With the Lynx on primetime for everyone to see, Rylander rejoiced. In a Facebook post full of superlatives, she hailed Game 1 as “a slam-bang, super-competitive WNBA playoff game won by our beloved Minnesota Lynx!”

Missing out on watching the regular season meant the playoffs were her first introduction to eight new faces on the team. Rylander recognized star forward Napheesa Collier, of course, and Target Center’s roaring crowd.

“We were watching in our living room here. I was doing all the appropriate noises like ‘Come on now!’ Those sorts of things,” she said. “Fortunately, neither of us have bad hearts.”

As the Lynx compete for their fifth championship, Rylander planned to shout at the TV again despite recovering from a case of bronchitis.

Even when living in Minnesota, she said, it was difficult to watch the Lynx from the remote earth-sheltered cottage she had built with her husband.

Over time, games were no longer carried on broadcast TV networks as sports shifted to expensive streaming services and other outlets that required viewers to pay more.

So they would anxiously wait to read after-game coverage in the newspaper. And occasionally she would take to Facebook to share her reactions. Rylander has for years posted about the Lynx, her love of basketball and literal hoop dreams. For example, in 2013, she wrote about her husband dreaming he was playing basketball and touched the rim.

“He did captain the Little Falls Flyers to a successful season, but that was in 1947,” Rylander wrote.

The social media posts are a testament and record of her devotion to the Lynx, whom she calls “tall, strong, fast girls who can pass and guard and shoot the three.”

More than once she told disappointed Vikings and Twins fans to perhaps consider supporting the state’s most accomplished professional team instead.

“Maybe one of these years the T-wolves will do something,” she said. “I’d rather put my money on Cheryl Reeve and the girls for now.”