The path to WNBA remains one of the hardest in pro sports, even if you’re a top

If you want to get to the WNBA, South Carolina is the place to be. The best high school girls basketball players in the nation go there to learn from the GOAT — legendary coach Dawn Staley — and for many it leads to a professional contract.

South Grand Prairie five-star senior center Adhel Tac has those same dreams and signed with the two-time national champion last month.

“Dawn Staley has a track record,” Tac said. “She produces really great players. I’m very blessed and fortunate to be able to play for the best. It’s the place that I’ll get the best development possible.”

Tac will be playing for a college that has produced 16 WNBA players — 12 since Staley arrived in 2008. Eight of the school’s alumni were on opening-day WNBA rosters in 2023, and South Carolina had five players selected in the 2023 draft.

As district play gets started around the Dallas area and the ultra-competitive holiday basketball tournaments are almost upon us, Tac is getting ready to head to South Carolina to begin a journey that she hopes leads her to the WNBA. She suffered a season-ending knee injury in November and will graduate early so she can start college next semester.

It comes at a time when the WNBA is more popular than ever and expansion is on the horizon. But statistics show that the odds of making it in the WNBA still aren’t great unless you are the very best of the best.

Like Duncanville football sensation Colin Simmons, former Lake Highlands basketball star Tre Johnson and Southlake Carroll soccer phenom Kennedy Fuller, Tac has the potential to become the face of Dallas-area sports at the pro level someday. History suggests that the 6-5 Tac has a realistic shot at the WNBA because she is the No. 1 recruit in talent-rich D-FW for the Class of 2024.

Six of the 10 No. 1 area recruits in the classes of 2008 through 2017 got drafted, and five of them played in the WNBA.

The path to the pros is a viable one if you are at the top of your class, and Tac has a chance to follow in the footsteps of a pair of WNBA champions, one of them a Hall of Famer.

Hotbed of basketball

D-FW is the mecca of girls basketball in Texas and has seen former No. 1 area recruits Odyssey Sims from Irving MacArthur, Moriah Jefferson (homeschooled in Glenn Heights), Ariel Atkins from Duncanville, Lauren Cox from Flower Mound and Chennedy Carter from Mansfield Timberview reach the WNBA from the classes of 2010 through 2017. Atkins and Sims were All-Stars in the league, Atkins won a WNBA title in 2019 and Carter made the all-rookie team in 2020.

That trend started with Duncanville’s Tamika Catchings, the 1997 Naismith National Prep Player of the Year who became a 10-time WNBA…