Marisa Ingemi has covered the NHL’s Boston Bruins and the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries. But her favorite story unfolded far away from the bright lights of any sold-out arena, in a leaky warehouse where a nonprofit roller derby league was struggling to survive. 

“This rundown West Oakland building is the physical and spiritual home of Bay Area Derby, aka BAD,” Ingemi (’17) wrote in August 2023. “Almost everyone among BAD’s three teams and 20-plus skaters is queer. Many are trans, an identity now being pushed out of traditional sports by legislation across the country.” 

“I love to find a niche. I’m always looking for stories within the margins that other reporters aren’t thinking of,” she says. Though Ingemi’s first big break came covering men’s professional ice hockey, the niches she most enjoys covering—and for which she’s built her reputation—involve women’s sports and queer athletes. Her roller derby story received a 2024 Excellence in Sports Writing award from the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists and Ingemi was a finalist for the inaugural Billie Jean King Award for Excellence in Women’s Sports Coverage, which is presented by the Associated Press Sports Editors.

“Sometimes people get into sports journalism because they love sports, then they fall in love with the journalism. That’s definitely what happened with me,” Ingemi says. “Sports journalism intersects with every topic. You’re kind of covering everything and I really love that.”

Women’s sports are exploding in popularity. Professional basketball, hockey and soccer leagues have all expanded in the past two years. Two billion people watched the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. And the 2024 NCAA Women’s Basketball championship game—in which the University of South Carolina defeated the University of Iowa and their superstar Caitlin Clark—drew more viewers than the men’s final the next day. 

The sports media industry, historically male-dominated, is slowly catching up. According to a report published by the Wasserman talent agency and ESPN Research, women’s sports accounted for just 16 percent of the sports media coverage in 2022—but that still represented a 300 percent increase since 2019. 

At the San Francisco Chronicle, where Ingemi has worked since 2022, she landed in a newsroom that is investing in women’s sports coverage. They’ve given her the freedom to cover stories like the Bay Area Derby and she’s one of only four beat writers across the 13-team WNBA who travels to away games.  

The Golden State Valkyries played their first game in May 2025, but rumors of the league’s possible expansion to the Bay Area had been circulating for years. “I love seeing people who have wanted a WNBA team for 20 years,” Ingemi says. “We’re in this moment where we’re seeing other groups of people being acknowledged—like, you matter.”

Writing for this audience, Ingemi says, motivates her to bring something new to the sports section. “There’s an opportunity to change things. We don’t have to always do things the way men’s sports have historically [been covered]. There are going to be fans of the Valkyries that have never opened a sports section before.” 

That means explaining the league and the game for new fans in a way that writers on the men’s beat may not. It also means looking beyond the court. “The people drawn to women’s basketball want more people-oriented stuff, social issue stuff,” she says.

Sports journalism intersects with every topic. You’re kind of covering everything and I really love that.

Marisa Ingemi

Over the past year, some of those social issues have also exploded into political controversy. “Sports are political,” Ingemi says. “And women’s sports especially are political because there’s a lot of people who don’t even want women to do them.”

No sports topic has been more politicized over the past year than the participation of transgender women. In 2024, then-presidential-candidate Donald Trump promised to ban transgender women from women’s sports and targeted the San Jose State University volleyball team, for whom a transgender woman was competing. The story grew as several schools forfeited games rather than play against the Spartans and a member of the team joined a lawsuit seeking to overturn the NCAA rule allowing transgender women to compete. (The NCAA updated its policy in February 2025, limiting participation in women’s sports to athletes assigned female at birth.)

From October 2024 into early 2025, Ingemi reported almost exclusively on the San Jose State story. She wrote more than 20 stories about the team and the growing controversy, even fact-checking President Trump after he falsely claimed that the player could spike the ball dangerously fast and had injured an opponent. That coverage earned Ingemi 2024 National Sports Media Association cosportswriter of the year honors for California.

Ingemi has had mixed feelings about blending her love of sports with her profession. At one point, she realized she could no longer watch baseball and football for fun. But focusing on women’s sports has reinvigorated the passion that drew her to sports journalism in the first place.

“It’s just so different seeing something grow like this,” she says. “This must’ve been what it was like watching baseball in 1915. We’re seeing something come into itself. And we’re seeing something that people love and that they’re getting access to for the first time. That’s made me really love what sports can do for people.”