The Chicago Sky can’t keep playing from behind.
That has been the franchise’s mantra since winning its lone WNBA title in 2021. As the league experiences an unparalleled boom in investment and popularity, every aspect of the Sky organization — from stadium experience to player resources — is under scrutiny and subject to the same question:
Are the Sky keeping up with the rest of the WNBA?
This season, the Sky quietly took a crucial step toward matching the league’s heightened standards for basketball operations by hiring head athletic trainer Jess Cohen.
A decade ago, Cohen cut her teeth on the Sky’s training staff while she was a doctoral student in physical therapy at Northwestern. Now she has returned with the hope of lifting the team’s sports performance department to the top of the WNBA.
“We’ve come a long way, and across the league as a whole, everything is elevating,” Cohen told the Tribune. “You want to be at the forefront of that. You don’t want to be playing catch-up.
“You can’t compete without the ability to provide a safe environment where athletes can continue to grow and get better on the court and off the court. That’s a staple of a good organization.”
From the ground up
When point guard Courtney Vandersloot started her career with the Sky in 2011, the athletic training staff was used to getting creative. That meant coming up with solutions for the team’s lack of resources, such as creating makeshift ice baths out of trash cans in the hallway at Sachs Recreation Center in Deerfield.
Cohen remembers well: As an intern with the Sky in 2013, she was the one holding the timer while Vandersloot shivered in the trash can. Even then, Cohen could tell the Sky’s resources were uniquely limited.
“When I say it was me on the floor with a yoga mat — that’s where we started,” she said.
Vandersloot and other members of the Sky often share these anecdotes to show how investment in Chicago and across the WNBA has skyrocketed over the last 15 years. But these conditions weren’t necessarily a norm, even in the league’s earlier years.
Sky guard Ariel Atkins entered the league in 2018 in a different situation with the Washington Mystics, who are owned by Washington Wizards and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis. Atkins said she had access to everything she needed: cold tubs, massage therapists, training space in an NBA facility.
“I had a good life,” she told the Tribune with a laugh.
The Sky always have been playing from behind — a reality they are fervently attempting to rectify this offseason with the completion of a new training facility in Bedford Park.
For Cohen, the new facility is a necessity for her staff to accomplish its basic goals. Having around-the-clock access to training resources allows the Sky to evaluate players throughout the offseason and provide consistent rehabilitation resources to injured players.
But facilities alone can’t improve a team’s approach to sports performance. For Sky general manager Jeff Pagliocca, that effort starts and ends with hiring and supporting an experienced staff.
“It was really important to us to rebuild our whole medical department outside of the trends of the WNBA and the NBA,” Pagliocca told the Tribune. “It’s such an important facet of a team.”
Vandersloot recalled the Sky cycling through four athletic trainers in her first two seasons.
“It was like a revolving door,” she told the Tribune. “It was hard to get really good care. I think most of it had to do with a lack of money. You can’t get good people without paying them, right?”
Over the last decade, the Sky’s performance staff has stabilized. But it typically has consisted of only two to three full-time staffers juggling the workload.
For instance, strength and conditioning coach Ann Crosby has served double duty for years as the Sky’s vice president of basketball operations. That means setting weightlifting regimens and warming up players on the court before games while also taking charge of logistics such as booking flights for road games.
Sky players and staff often joke that the team would simply fall apart without Crosby — a reflection both of her remarkable talent to balance myriad responsibilities and of the Sky’s reliance on individuals to fulfill simultaneous positions.
“We find people that have multiple skill sets here and have them do multiple jobs,” Vandersloot said. “That has kind of been the old blueprint. More for your buck, I guess.”
Under Cohen, the Sky’s sports performance staff has grown to three athletic trainers — all boasting experience with the NBA or USA Basketball — in addition to Crosby, who still fulfills her strength and conditioning role.
This is the largest sports performance staff the Sky have fielded. And Cohen hopes it’s just the start of increased staffing under her leadership.
Through future hires and improved resources, she hopes to bring the staff closer to an NBA standard.
“The amount of time that goes into injury prevention and recovery — all the maintenance work that you do — it’s a different level of commitment,” Cohen said. “In the NBA, you have the resources to provide that. Anything you could need, you can access it right at your fingertips. That was very eye-opening.
“My goal is to bring it back here. … The women deserve just as good as the men get.”
Establishing new standards
It didn’t take long for Cohen to make a strong impression — on the Sky and on the sports performance industry in professional basketball.
After establishing herself in Chicago while earning her physical therapy doctorate from Northwestern, Cohen took over as the Atlanta Dream’s head athletic trainer in 2018. Two seasons there established her as a calm, thorough presence in the locker room who quickly earned the trust of players.
That reputation helped Cohen receive interest from the NBA, and she moved to Portland in 2019 to become an assistant trainer for the Trail Blazers. When they promoted her to head athletic trainer in 2022, she became the only woman holding that position in the NBA — a status the St. Charles North alumna maintained when she moved closer to home to work for the Milwaukee Bucks in 2023.
Even in her first season back with the Sky, Cohen stood out to players. When Pagliocca mentioned her as a possible hire for the position, Vandersloot responded with immediate enthusiasm.
“It was a no-brainer,” she said.
Cohen accepted the position in April while the Bucks still were competing in the NBA playoffs. During rare gaps in her schedule, she called each Sky player individually to introduce herself, assess prior injury history and set a foundation of communication. When the Sky hosted team dinners, Cohen made the trip down from Milwaukee to meet her new team in person.
Those early weeks made a strong impression on players such as Atkins.
“She took it serious,” Atkins said. “The biggest thing for an AT is communication with the athlete. That’s very big for me — giving me options and communicating. That’s more important than anything, allowing me to listen to my body and helping me understand what is best for me.”
Cohen’s first season on the job was a particularly busy one. Vandersloot tore the ACL in her right knee within Cohen’s first two weeks full time in Chicago.
She gave the veteran point guard one day to mourn the loss of the season. But the next day, she presented Vandersloot with a one-year plan to return to the court.
Under Cohen’s guidance, Vandersloot underwent several weeks of “prehab” workouts focused on stabilizing muscles such as the glutes and quads. This is a newer trend that accelerates an athlete’s recovery by preparing muscles to compensate for the weaknesses created by surgery.
Managing the ACL repair of the starting point guard was a tall enough task for a new athletic trainer. But after Vandersloot went down, the injuries kept piling up.
Atkins sustained a calf strain that required weeks of intensive rehabilitation. After the All-Star break, star forward Angel Reese suffered a back injury that limited her for nearly a month, forcing Cohen into one of the more difficult negotiations of an athletic trainer’s job — persuading a player to take a slower recovery route.
“Sometimes there is a learning curve that athletes — especially such talented basketball players — they love to just be on the basketball court,” Cohen said. “The ones that learn how beneficial it is to be in the weight room, that helps their healing.
“Having years of experience in the NBA and the WNBA before that has prepared me to look at the athlete as a whole and all the aspects that go into rehabbing someone to optimize their recovery.”
Even with a reinforced staff, helping rehabilitate three injured players while simultaneously maintaining the health of the remaining roster is a difficult task.
While the majority of the roster is eager for the Sky’s resources to improve in the new facility next season, Cohen’s hiring has helped fill gaps in the team’s approach to injury management and recovery.
“She’s doing what she can with what we have,” Reese said. “She’s done a great job bringing her knowledge while also doing what she can while she’s here because it’s a lot taking on a new job with a lack of resources.”
Playing catch-up
Vandersloot always knew the Sky were doing more with less. But it wasn’t until her first season with the New York Liberty in 2022 that she fully grasped how severely the franchise was lagging behind the rest of the league.
The Liberty have a league-high six full-time employees on their sports performance staff, including a rehabilitation specialist. Vandersloot felt every aspect of her care in New York was met with cohesive planning and thorough communication.
“There was no room for, like: ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t get to that. I was doing this,’” she said. “It’s a well-oiled machine. This is your job. This is what you’re doing. If you’re not doing it, it’s easy to pinpoint what needs to be fixed and who needs to fix it.”
Returning to the Sky this season was a harsh reminder of the disparity between the franchises. In Chicago, players are left to fill in the gaps in their physical care. The Sky don’t employ a full-time dietitian, so Vandersloot had to hire her own to create a nutrition plan while rehabbing from the torn ACL. Reese similarly outsources her own physical therapist and strength and conditioning coach to supplement the staff the Sky provide.
While her day-to-day duties are focused on immediate player care and rehabilitation, Cohen’s role also empowers her to set a budget and make hires to expand the sports performance staff. She ideally intends to expand her staff to at least six full-time employees.
“There’s no more valuable resource than a pair of hands when you’re in the performance department,” Cohen said. “The bells and whistles are cool and fun and shiny and help us a lot. But if we can pick one thing, we need bodies and hands to work.”
Vandersloot hopes the Sky will employ a dietitian next season. Atkins would like to see a heavier emphasis on data science. Cohen’s wish list is even longer: a sports psychologist, improved technology and equipment such as force plates for the weight room.
Those hopes, however, ultimately rely on owner Michael Alter.
For the last few years, Alter has been met with growing concerns about his ability to keep up with the rest of the WNBA. A local real estate investor who initially bought into the league with a $10 million expansion fee, Alter has been bolstered by an influx of recent investors — but those new rounds of funding can’t fully bridge the gap between the Sky’s spending power and that of billionaire owners such as the Liberty’s Joe Tsai.
Criticism of Alter’s spending typically fixates on the Sky’s training facility. According to public records, the team is footing roughly 30% of the bill on the new $38 million facility, the completion of which has been delayed by a series of additions to the original plans.
But the Sky’s relative lack of spending power is reflected most thoroughly in the team’s staffing, which lags behind most WNBA teams in key areas such as analytics and sports performance.
Alter declined interview requests from the Tribune.
Vandersloot said she speaks regularly with Alter about the improvements necessary for the Sky to keep up with their competitors. The pair have a strong relationship, and those conversations are often cordial, even enthusiastic.
But change is slow to materialize. Even as the Sky take steps toward improved investment, Alter has yet to prove he is both capable and willing to match the level of spending seen out of the league’s heavy hitters.
“If you’re not here every single day, you don’t know what you’re lacking or what isn’t working,” Vandersloot said. “You just rely on people telling you, and if the message is not being delivered, you don’t know.
“When I’m telling (Alter), he’s very receptive. It’s almost like: ‘Duh. Why is that not in place?’ But for whatever reason, the message is not getting there. You have to learn what we need and what we don’t.
“It’s nothing against the Sky organization. We have really good people. We just need more of them.”