Copper gifts courtside seats to SD basketball player

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — The Phoenix Mercury may have played here over a week ago, but the WNBA squad has gained a fan for life in 11-year-old Madelyn Garrigan.

Tickets for the preseason game between the Mercury and the Chicago Sky went on sale at 10 a.m. on March 25. By 10:07 a.m., the first WNBA game in South Dakota history was officially sold out.

“Every time I clicked add to cart on the tickets, the tickets were used, the tickets were sold, whatever,” Cally Garrigan said. “I never did get them but I figured we’d still go to the clinic because my parents live on the way down there.”

Cally Garrigan drove her two daughters, Madelyn and Gracie, more than five hours from their home in Faith to Sioux Falls for a youth clinic hosted by the Mercury.

“I was in the autograph line and then I said, thank you Kahleah, and she asked me how do you know my name,” Madelyn Garrigan said. “I was like I watch all of your games and she said oh yeah, are you coming to the game tomorrow? And I said no we couldn’t get tickets.”

Mercury star Kahleah Copper made sure Madelyn would be at the game. Copper arranged for the Garrigans to sit courtside and gifted Madelyn a pair of game-worn, autographed shoes following the Phoenix victory.

“After the game, Kahleah did an interview and then came up to me and said, these are for you,” Madelyn said. “I was really shocked and in amazement, it was really cool.”

“It ended up just getting better and better like you just can’t make it up,” Cally Garrigan said. “It was very, very awesome.”

The whirlwind weekend served as a reminder that being kind is just as important as being competitive.

“I just feel like I want to be more like Kahleah,” Madelyn said. “Like how nice she is and how she plays the game and stuff.”

“You got to have a little fire and you’ve got to do something that brings out that fire in you but at the end of the day, it’s just about how you treat people and I think Kahleah gave us all a great reminder of that,” Cally Garrigan said.

When Madelyn grows up, she wants to play basketball. After her playing days are over, she hopes to become an architect — all while cheering on Copper and the Mercury.