{"id":39202,"date":"2026-08-11T19:51:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T14:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=39202"},"modified":"2026-08-11T19:51:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T14:51:11","slug":"sheryl-swoopes-on-motherhood-and-rokus-gamechangers-mother-athlete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=39202","title":{"rendered":"Sheryl Swoopes On Motherhood and Roku&#8217;s &#8220;Gamechangers: Mother\/Athlete&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tThe Roku Originals documentary, \u201cGamechangers: Mother\/Athlete,\u201d made its world premiere at the 24th annual Martha\u2019s Vineyard African American Film Festival (<a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/mvaaff\/\" id=\"auto-tag_mvaaff\" data-tag=\"mvaaff\">MVAAFF<\/a>) on Sunday afternoon. The intimate film is part of <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/film\/news\/wnba-sheryl-swoopes-gamechanges-mother-athlete-docuseries-roku-1236804905\/\">Roku\u2019s \u201cGamechangers\u201d series<\/a> and follows <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/wnba\/\" id=\"auto-tag_wnba\" data-tag=\"wnba\">WNBA<\/a> stars <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/sheryl-swoopes\/\" id=\"auto-tag_sheryl-swoopes\" data-tag=\"sheryl-swoopes\">Sheryl Swoopes<\/a>, Skylar Diggins-Smith, Bria Hartley, Natalie Achonwa and Allison Feaster as they reflect on the joys and challenges of navigating pregnancy, postpartum and motherhood as professional athletes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t\u201cI think as viewers, as a public, we often see our athletes as heroes. They\u2019re also human beings, and they\u2019re dealing with a lot of the same day-to-day issues that we deal with,\u201d director Christine Turner told me during a Q&amp;A following the screening. As a storyteller and as a filmmaker generally, it\u2019s always my hope and my goal to tell the stories of complex, multifaceted, multidimensional individuals. It\u2019s important because everyone out there needs to see and understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tSwoopes, who was the first woman to sign on to play in the WNBA during its inaugural season in 1997, got pregnant just ahead of the league\u2019s first year. In the documentary, she reflects on how terrified she was to share her pregnancy with her team and with the public.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t\u201cThere was a part of me that was like, \u2018Everybody is counting on me. There\u2019s no way I can get pregnant right now,\u2019\u201d Swoopes said. \u201cAt the same time, I have to say it wasn\u2019t my plan, but it was done. And so that\u2019s what I took from that. And listen, I just tried to do the best that I could do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tIt\u2019s been nearly 30 years since the WNBA was established \u2014 funded by the NBA. However, in \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/gamechanges-mother-athlete\/\" id=\"auto-tag_gamechanges-mother-athlete\" data-tag=\"gamechanges-mother-athlete\">Gamechanges: Mother\/Athlete<\/a>,\u201d Swoopes and the rest of the players discuss the lack of resources, particularly regarding their maternal welfare. For nearly three decades, it\u2019s been up to these women to figure out their schedules, finances and everything in between during their pregnancies and thereafter with little guidance or support from the organization. The WNBA did not offer fully paid maternity leave until 2018.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t\u201cI hope people come away with a greater appreciation of what Sheryl and so many other women in the league have done and gone through,\u201d Turner said. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly hard, and it\u2019s admirable and inspiring.\u00a0I hope we get a better window into the issues women in the league and professional sports are facing. And then I hope that audiences can also just relate to something of themselves or their partner or their loved ones, their mothers or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tMotherhood and career are always going to be a balancing act, but it certainly can be done. For Swoopes, it\u2019s all about embracing everything that comes with it. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t\u201cSo many times, though, we get caught up in everything else going on around us that we don\u2019t stop to concentrate and focus on ourselves mentally, physically, emotionally, all these things,\u201d Swoopes said. \u201cThe first thing I would say is make sure you\u2019re taking care of you before you take that next step. But the other part of that is, for myself, I didn\u2019t plan. It just happened. And when it happened, I embraced it after I had to do all the other things. I would just say make sure you\u2019re ready when it happens. And never question whether the decision you made was right or wrong. You live with that decision, and you make the most of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t\u201cGamechangers: Mother\/Athlete\u201d will stream free on The Roku Channel this fall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Roku Originals documentary, \u201cGamechangers: Mother\/Athlete,\u201d made its world premiere at the 24th annual Martha\u2019s Vineyard African American Film Festival (MVAAFF) on Sunday afternoon. The intimate film is part of Roku\u2019s \u201cGamechangers\u201d series and follows WNBA stars Sheryl Swoopes, Skylar Diggins-Smith, Bria Hartley, Natalie Achonwa and Allison Feaster as they reflect on the joys and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/P1029WYP.jpg?crop=0px%2C184px%2C1514px%2C851px&resize=1000%2C563","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}