Monarchs Blog and Q&A

Bee staff writer Melody Gutierrez grew up in Twentynine Palms. At 14-years-old, she decided to combine her two passions -- sports and writing -- when she became a special assignments reporter for the Desert Trail, her hometown weekly newspaper. Melody headed to Northern California in 2000 to attend Chico State and has remained in the region ever since. She earned an internship with The Bee and subsequently became a staff writer in 2004 and has covered virtually every sport, starting with high schools, up through college and then the pros. Melody took over coverage of the Monarchs last season and chronicled the team's pursuit of a second straight league championship -- a quest that fell just short.

Melody welcomes your questions and will answer as many as she can as the season progresses.

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Monarchs Blog and Q&A front page | Updating the scorecard »

April 21, 2007

Peeking at training camp rosters

Looking around the league at training camp rosters, two in particular stand out. Detroit has 11 players on its roster after coach Bill Laimbeer waived two players and the team announced Kedra Holland-Corn would retire. On the other end of that spectrum, Los Angeles has a training camp roster 23 players.

The Sparks are taking a little bit of a risk with that many players. If a player is injured during training camp, the team is required to compensate her for that season. That money directly affects a team's salary cap, which is set at $728,000. The WNBA does not have a luxury tax.

Both Monarchs general manager John Whisenant and Laimbeer took possible injuries into consideration in limiting the number of camp invitees they brought in. Both teams have several veterans making close to the league maximum $93,000.

The Monarchs have 15 players on their training camp roster, which includes one invitee (Antionette Wells out of Wichita State) and no 2007 draft picks. Last year, the Monarchs had 18 players on their training camp roster, including six invitees and three 2006 draft picks.

Also of note, a former Monarchs player quietly announced her retirement from the WNBA last week. Detroit's Holland-Corn, an instrumental member of the Shock's 2003 and 2006 WNBA championship teams, barely made a peep with her decision to call it quits on her six year WNBA career.

Holland-Corn spent four seasons with the Monarchs, averaging 10 points. Last year, she was named to the Monarchs' All-Decade Team.

-- Melody Gutierrez

Posted by tnegrete, April 21, 2007 07:36 PM

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