After a 3-0 lead, the Seattle Storm WNBA team won the League Championship for 2018. The first person to be interviewed after the win was the President and General Manager of the team as well as Oak Park Alumni: Alisha Valavanis.

Starting from the very beginning, Valavanis said, “I grew up in Indiana then moved to Oak Park when I was 10, where I went to school. I’m definitely a proud Eagle.”

While at Oak Park High School, Valavanis played for the girl’s basketball team and was also an active member in the Associated Student Body. Her graduating year in 1995, Valavanis was school president as well as homecoming queen.

“Oak Park is a wonderful community. The academics were top notch and it set up a really strong foundation where I could play sports but also be really active and involved in the rest of the school experience,” Valavanis said.

Valavanis is a child of six with two sets of girl twins, her being an identical pair along with her sister Alexa Valavanis. Alexa, who was born five minutes before Alisha, describes certain characteristics she had always seen in Alisha growing up.

When the two first moved to Oak Park, their town-house had no basketball court within walking distance, so the twins invented a game involving “precision.”

“Alisha and I played basketball like that nonstop everyday that we possibly could and for as long as we lived in that house,” Alexa said. “We were just so determined to get good at that game and we loved playing against each other.”

While at Oak Park, the twins helped earn the school’s first women’s basketball championship in 1994 and were also key to deciding the current school colors.

“[Alisha and I] decided that we really wanted to change the school colors from yellow and brown to black and gold. When we got that idea, we did not stop until it was achieved.” Alexa said.

Alexa says that being a twin was integral in both her and her twin’s careers.

“In the case of Alisha and I, we literally had the same passions and we were so equal in so many ways that the inner voice that competes with you exists in real life and that real life competitiveness shaped us both,” Alexa said.

At the time the twins were at OPHS, Coach Rob Hall was coaching the boy’s basketball team. He often saw the twins in the gym playing with the boy’s team and said this was the time he really got to know the twins.

“My wife, Gretchen and I have been very close with her and her entire family ever since that time,” Hall wrote. “My wife and I thought so much of the twins and were so close to them and their family that when our younger daughter was born during the summer they graduated from OPHS, we gave her a middle name which is an amalgam of the twins’ middle names — the twins are Alexa Leigh and Alisha Ann and when she was born we proudly named our daughter Summer LeighAnn Hall.”

Alisha and her twin were freshmen during Coach Hall’s first year of coaching the boy’s basketball team.

“It was clear even as a freshman that Alisha was well-liked and well-respected by both her teachers and her peers. The twins were two of the best basketball players not only at OP, but in all of Ventura County,” Hall wrote.

Post-graduation, Alexa and Alisha Valavanis were recruited to play basketball. The two went to Chico State up in northern California, where they played for 4 years. Alisha Valavanis studied journalism, specifically public relations, and then went on to earn her masters at Chico in Sports Administration.

She then coached for four years at Chico State and took her team to a ‘Final Four’ and a ‘Sweet Sixteen,’ which are rounds of elimination in women’s college division basketball. Her team eventually reached the Division 1 level. After her successes at Chico, she became associate head coach at the University of Pacific, a division one team, where she coached for four to five years.

After coaching for California college teams, Valavanis spent a year with the Golden State Warriors before moving to the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked in Cal Athletics and ran a development team, which is a team that is self-run and self-organizing and was there for four years, until the Seattle Storm called.

“I’ve been the President and General Manager of the Storm for the last four years,” Valavanis said.

Throughout her experiences with coaching basketball, Valavanis said she has discovered common characteristics she has used throughout her career.

“I’m working with and building teams. As a president, I run the behind the scenes and then as a general manager, it’s all about building a team on the court,” Valavanis said. “Both at Oak Park and at Chico State I had a really cool opportunity to be a part of sports, but also the business behind sports and that helped provide a foundation for what I do today.”

Currently, her team, the Seattle Storm, has won the Women’s National Basketball Association championship against the Washington Mystics. As someone who loves to travel, Valavanis said she is looking forward to flying to Barcelona for the world championships.

Despite the traveling aspect of her job, Valavanis thinks the most fulfilling part of her job is her surrounding community.

“The most fulfilling part of the work is that we are a part of the fabric of this community and that we are providing entertainment and impact to families and to youth. The WNBA and Seattle Storm are all about the community. It’s a professional sports team that aims to do good and have positive impact on the lives of kids and that to me is what I’m really excited about and it’s why I’m doing the work,” Valavanis said.

Valavanis reflected back on Oak Park specifically being the starting point for her occupation.

“There’s no question that I am where I am today and I have this opportunity to lead a really special franchise because of all the people along the way, starting with a lot of really great mentors at Oak Park and then all the way through,” she said.

Valavanis has won a lot throughout her career, on and off the court.

“Winning is being yourself,” Valavanis said. “Because that’s how you are going to have joy, that’s how you are going to make impact, that’s how this journey is going to be really fulfilling: it’s to be exactly who you are.”