Tampa is set to get a professional women’s basketball team, but it’s not the city’s first try at bringing pro hoops to town

A clip from page eight of the Tampa Times Aug. 15, 1980 newspaper. Credit: newspapers.com Earlier this month, the Jacksonville-based women’s professional basketball league Upshot (stylized all-caps) announced that it will be awarding an expansion franchise to the city of Tampa for the 2027 season. The announcement of the yet-unnamed team marks not the arrival, but the return of women’s professional basketball to the city. More than four decades ago, the Tampa Bay Sun (yes it had the same of Tampa’s current women’s professional soccer team, which launched in 2024 and went on to win the inaugural USL Super League championship) proved to be more of an idea than an actual franchise, but still managed to leave a legacy as the team that never was. In the late summer of 1980, Michele Himmelberg loaded an overnight bag into her red MGB convertible and set out for the two-hour drive north to Tampa. It was a trek she had made plenty of times for her job at the Fort Myers News-Press, u