![]() “ came to this country, and suffered from a lot of discrimination being different,” she says. With time, Nguyen also became more understanding of her parents’ push to assimilate her as a young girl. One night, determined to speak her truth, she woke up her parents and announced: “I’m gay.” It took nearly a decade, but they have come to “fully embrace who I am,” she says. Off the court, Nguyen was struggling with her identity in more ways than one. “All of your differences… all of that stuff doesn’t matter when you step on the court,” she says. Nguyen was captain of her high school varsity team, and voted MVP by her teammates three years in a row. Her insecurities evaporated the moment she picked up a basketball. “I pushed all of my Vietnamese identity out of my life in my childhood and young adulthood to assimilate, to fit in or to become American.” “I remember feeling like I had to fit in, and to me that meant assimilating to whiteness and letting go of my Vietnamese culture, heritage, and pride,” she says. Nguyen grew up in the predominantly white city of Portland. “I didn’t want her to be so different… I wanted her to be like all the Americans in the country.” “I told my husband, ‘We don’t know any American names, but in this book I think Jennifer sounds like a really beautiful ,’” she says. At the hospital for the birth of their daughter, Thu scrolled through an American baby name book. Tuong and Thu got married in 1979, and moved to Portland where Tuong’s brother lived. Thu’s father had been a colonel in the Vietnamese army. After spending time in a Thai refugee camp, Tuong eventually arrived in Minnesota, where he met Nguyen’s mother, Thu, who left Vietnam one year earlier at the age of 18. The group drifted for days on the South China Sea, before the boat sprang a leak and they flagged down some Thai fishermen who led them ashore. Her father, Tuong Nguyen, fled Vietnam after the war in 1976 at age 17, by secretly boarding a fishing boat with eleven other teenagers and young adults. The menu features nachos, vegan burgers, and wings with a Vietnamese glaze-an ode to Nguyen’s heritage. Everything on tap comes from female-owned breweries. Regulars come for the tight-knit, sports-obsessed community, and stay for the local craft beer. And five enormous TVs play women’s sports, all the time. Signature drinks have names like Title IX and GOAT. StarchefsĪt the Sports Bra, walls are filled with photos of Serena Williams, Sue Bird, and Allyson Felix. Jenny Nguyen, founder of the Sports Bra, pictured at the bar. Women’s wins are becoming louder than ever. “Right now is the beginning-not of a peak, but of an upward trajectory that’s not going to slow down any time soon.” “The timing of the Bra… could not have been more perfect,” Nguyen says. It’s a shrine to female athletes, a safe space for the queer community, and a brick-and-mortar beacon of the ongoing fight for gender equity in the sports world. In 2022, Nguyen opened one of the only bars in the world devoted entirely to women’s sports. It took four years and a lot of hard work, but she turned that dream into a reality. “I was like, ‘If anybody’s going to give it a shot, I’m going to give it a shot,’” Nguyen tells ELLE. She joked to the group that the only way they would be able to enjoy a game at a bar, is if they opened their own. The rest of the bar stared at them, confused.īy then, Nguyen had become accustomed to watching women’s basketball without sound. When Notre Dame scored a three pointer against Mississippi to break a tie in the final seconds, they all jumped up and started screaming. Jenny Nguyen was drinking pitchers of Fat Tire with friends at a Portland bar, and watching the 2018 women’s basketball championship game on mute on a small TV in the corner. Határ also plays for Sopron Basket in Hungary, a club several WNBA players compete for during the offseason.The win would have been better with some volume. She averaged 4.8 points and 3.7 rebounds over six contests as she helped her country to a fourth-place finish. Most recently, Határ competed with the Hungarian national team in the 2023 FIBA EuroBasket tournament in June. She again had a training camp contract this season but it was waived due to EuroLeague and EuroBasket commitments. She was signed to a training camp contract with the team in 2022, but it was waived due to injury. Határ last played in the WNBA in 2021 with the Indiana Fever, appearing in seven contests and averaging 4.9 points and 2.8 rebounds per game before suffering a season-ending injury. This move should help add depth at the center position, something Connecticut has been trying to tinker with ever since two-time All-Star Brionna Jones suffered a season-ending Achilles tear on June 20. The Connecticut Sun announced the signing of 6-foot-10 Hungarian center Bernadett Határ to a rest of season contract on Wednesday. ![]()
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