These days, Gabby Williams is a newly-signed member of the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries. But she often thinks of her ten year-old self, hooping at the Mission Recreation Center.
After tournaments, she would help put away chairs and the timekeeping equipment still wearing her Mission Rec Rebels jersey.
Then, with the chairs put away, she’d head out to play even more basketball.
“Even after all that, when you’re a kid, you have all this energy,” Williams said. Her group of friends would play one game, two, three and four. The sun would set and they would still be playing as their parents started to barbecue. “I still think about that memory a lot, just like how much we loved the game growing up.”
A 2025 WNBA All-Star, All-Defensive First Team and a WNBA steals leader, Williams had her choice of teams during free agency.
Sure, Williams signed with the Valkyries because she wants to win, this she has made clear. But it’s also been a homecoming for the Reno native who spent her summers in the Bay playing ball.
“The Bay Area is just just filled with love, filled with appreciation,” Williams said. “I missed that culture.”
“I know up close and personal exactly just what it means to be a female athlete here,” she added. “So that definitely played into my decision.”
Now, she will be perhaps the face of the second-year franchise after signing a three-year contract, becoming the highest paid athlete on the team..
“She’s one of the best two-way players in the world,” Valkyries head coach Natalie Nakase said in Williams’ introductory press conference. “In terms of the human being part, she’s humble. She cares deeply about winning, and that was the priority.”
Williams’ Bay Area connection doesn’t end with her Rebel days. She and her sister, Jayda Noble, have a bevy of extended family and friends in the area. Noble played at Cal in Berkeley for a year, and her younger brothers both go to school at Cal State East Bay. In addition to the Rebels, Williams played for the Bay Area BullDawgs.
Alfonso Joo first saw Williams pick up a basketball when she was in fourth grade. The owner and coach of the Bay Area BullDawgs – “D capitalized for defense” – said he saw something in Williams from the start. .
“I could see what she had in that first game, you don’t see talent like that,” he said. “It’s just like a musical; everything just goes into place. And if she’s in the zone, forget about it.”
Joo has also coached top players such as Portland Fire guard Haley Jones and former Oregon State player Emily Codding, but Williams is by far the highest-profile.
If you just met her, he said, you wouldn’t know it.
“She’s so down to Earth,” Joo said. “I knew that whenever her dad called her Gabriella, that’s when it was business. But to me, she was always Gabby.”
Joo is now an assistant coach at St. Francis High School in Mountain View, but Williams would work out late into the night at Jefferson High School in Joo’s hometown of Daly City during her summers in the Bay.
“I owe that man a lot,” Williams said. “Taught me how to really just love the game and just play.”
At Mission Rec, Williams was coached by Oscar Jimenez, who founded the Rebels in 1984 while working for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department. The Rebels have won several national titles in their 40 seasons playing in the Amateur Athletic Union.
Jimenez died in 2010 after battling lymphoma but his network of players are on the look out for Williams.
At a recent press conference, she recalled attending a game at Ballhalla last year and running into a former Rebel.
“Somebody working at one of the restaurants outside of Chase Center actually used to play for Oscar Jimenez as well for Mission Rec and recognized me and gave my mom a free burrito,” Williams said. “ I just thought that was so cool that in that little moment, I ran into someone who played for Mission. I’m feeling the love.”
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