Former Grinnell point guard brings expertise to new gig covering WNBA team
October 10, 2025 — Leaving Grinnell College was bittersweet for Alissa Hirsh ’16 who was a four-year starter and two-year team captain for the women’s basketball team.
To this day, Hirsh remains first in assists, third in all-time scoring, and fifth in steals in Pioneer history. But even in 2016, Hirsh was looking ahead.
“I am sad about this part of it being over because it was so special, but I think I’m still going to grab a ball after work and go to the park,” she predicted at the time. “I’m going to try to find adult leagues. I’m going to teach my kids the game. I think this is just the start of a new relationship with basketball.”
Hirsh is pictured during her playing days at Grinnell College. She still has the most assists in Pioneer women’s basketball history.
These days she not only has a new relationship with basketball, she’s doing it full time covering the WNBA’s Chicago Sky for the Chicago Sun Times – a job she started in June.
“I’d never considered sports writing as a professional avenue,” admits Hirsh, an economics major who until recently had been working in finance. “I’ve been working on a memoir for years (it’s a coming-of-age story about leaving Grinnell and her identity as a player, among other issues), so I thought any professional writing would come from a book.”
After two years in San Francisco working for a boutique finance firm after graduating, Hirsh returned home to Chicago, continued to work in finance, and started blogging from a fan’s perspective about the Chicago Sky.
“It was a fun creative project with friends called the Sky Townies,” Hirsh explains. “We were obsessed with the team at a very exciting time. The year we got season tickets (2021) they won the championship.”
At the same time, she coached girls basketball at her former high school, Niles North, starting as varsity assistant. “I interviewed for the head coach job and didn’t get it, but I was junior varsity head coach, which was fun, exciting, and we were terrible,” she says.
Hirsh grew up in suburban Chicago and started playing basketball in 3rd grade. “I loved most sports, but pretty much, basketball was my one true love.”
Image one: Alissa Hirsh ’16 interviews Indiana Fever All-Star Aliyah Boston before the Fever played the Chicago Sky in a regular season game. Image two: Hirsh talks with Sky second-year player Kamilla Cardoso before the July 27 game at the United Center in Chicago.
As the Caitlin Clark phenomenon grew and the WNBA gained popularity, Hirsh’s blog drew the attention of an editor from the women’s sports site The Next. Hirsh was invited to cover the Sky for them.
She worked her full-time day job while hustling for a year writing about the team, then heard about the Sun-Times opening from fellow Chicago sportswriter Will Gottlieb ’15, who covers the Bulls for the site CHGO. Hirsh applied, interviewed, and got the job.
“I follow them everywhere they go,” says Hirsh, who writes a story almost every day during the season, including two on game day. “I see it as my job to understand the team as thoroughly as humanly possible. I try to talk to as many players, coaches, and management as I can on a daily basis.”
Her first few weeks covering the Sky full time felt like a vacation. “I’d get up, write my article, go to basketball practice and that lifestyle was amazing. It was like, OMG, my office is a basketball court! But then you’re traveling every other week, and you have six stories you’re working on, and someone’s mad at you, and it doesn’t feel like vacation anymore,” she says while smiling.
The players appreciate Hirsh’s basketball knowledge, which is especially evident in her longer features that go beyond the game’s box score.
In late August, for example, Hirsh talked to basketball legend Candace Parker at her jersey retirement ceremony. “I’d been reading Parker’s book and one of the things I asked her was about the skill of self-reflection, and who modeled that for her.” It was Parker’s college coach, the late Pat Summitt.
Parker appreciated the question and opened up. “It was a nice moment. I’d gotten the book recommendation from a Grinnellian, and I had a Grinnell observation on the book, and having that generated a deeper discussion that was very fun.”
While the Sky’s season has wrapped up, Hirsh will cover the WNBA finals, the three-on-three elite WNBA league, and high-profile college games to get a sense of who’s entering the league.
“I really am in the basketball life,” Hirsh says. “I played it, I coached it, and I superfanned it, so I can bring all my learnings from all of those roles into how I see the team, which is really helpful. Two years ago, I was working in finance and nerding out at Sky games, and now it’s become a full-time profession.”
—by Anne Stein ’84