WASHINGTON — Darianna Littlepage-Buggs started her first WNBA coaching camp like all sensible rookie would. She requested extra skilled gamers for ideas—listening to to decelerate and take all of it in and imagine that she would determine all of it out. This is the recommendation that veterans have been giving rookies so long as coaching camps have existed. Yet when the Mystics’ third-round decide relayed this to a room of reporters on media day earlier this week, there was a pure query that needed to be requested subsequent.
Veterans on this roster? Which veterans?
“Oh, I talked to all of them,” Littlepage-Buggs stated. “I talked to Kiki and Georgia and Lucy especially.”
Mystics gamers Kiki Iriafen, Georgia Amoore and Lucy Olsen had been rookies themselves simply final 12 months, with Amoore nonetheless a rookie for statistical functions, after spending final season recovering from a torn ACL. Iriafen and Olsen are simply 22 years previous—the similar as Littlepage-Buggs. On another roster, these gamers would seemingly nonetheless be thought-about kids themselves. Here? They would possibly as properly be veterans.
Or, as put by one other second-year participant, Madison Scott:
“We’re the young ones,” she stated, “but also the old ones at the same time, on this team.”
That’s a results of a group that’s remarkably inexperienced.
Washington entered coaching camp the place the common WNBA expertise is less than one season. While that quantity will certainly look a bit completely different as cuts are made and the roster is finalized, it could actually solely change a lot. The 18 gamers invited to Mystics camp embrace an unbelievable 12 rookies—sufficient to fill a whole roster themselves. The remaining six embrace 4 gamers who had been rookies simply final 12 months. (Iriafen, Olsen and Scott are joined in that group by artful guard Sonia Citron.) That leaves solely two gamers with a couple of season of expertise in the WNBA: Shakira Austin and Michaela Onyenwere, each comfortably established in the league however hardly grizzled veterans, with 4 and 5 years in the WNBA, respectively.
“I’m one of the oldest ones, which is freaking crazy,” Onyenwere stated. “I’m only 26!… Being a leader, in that way, it’ll be super important for me to grow in that area.”
All of this youth is a product of a franchise that has spent the previous few years stockpiling draft picks because it positions itself for a long-term, big-picture overhaul. The 2026 WNBA draft marked the second consecutive 12 months during which the Mystics had three first-round picks. (Citron, Iriafen and Amoore made up these choices in ’25; Lauren Betts, Angela Dugalic and Cotie McMahon adopted in ’26.) Washington has completed increase its provide of younger expertise. It now turns its focus to the difficult work of creating roughly a whole roster at the similar time.
The early returns had been promising final 12 months. Citron and Iriafen turned the first pair of rookie teammates to be named All-Stars since 1999. Amoore’s damage saved her sidelined and put her by way of a grueling rehab course of, but it surely gave her a full 12 months to check up on tendencies, schemes and professional habits that she’s going to now faucet into as the presumptive start line guard. But they received their begin on a roster with a number of key veteran gamers who’ve since departed. Now, a 12 months later, they’ll be anticipated to fill a few of that house themselves.
“Sonia and Kiki and Georgia, in particular, they’re growing up right in front of our eyes,” Mystics coach Sydney Johnson stated. “That doesn’t equate to a 10-year vet, but it equates to something. I’m already turning to them and leaning on them for leadership in ways—small and big ways—that I couldn’t last year.”
And for the rookies, there’s a sense that maybe no scenario may very well be extra promising. Washington affords them extra roster spots, extra potential minutes and younger camaraderie than another staff in the WNBA.
“It’s just been really fun. I mean, I feel like we’ve just finished the season, and I played all these girls, so I feel like we have so much to talk about,” stated Betts, contemporary off a nationwide title at UCLA and the Mystics’ high draft decide this 12 months at No. 4. “We’re all transitioning to this at the same time. So it’s just really special to kind of have that connection.”
The Mystics held a staff dinner out in Georgetown proper earlier than the begin of coaching camp. It didn’t take lengthy for this group of newcomers to understand how a lot that they had in frequent. Most of them performed with or in opposition to one another in school—not more than a 12 months or two in the past for the majority of them. Even a few of the gamers who’re a bit older are nonetheless simply as new to the league as their extra just lately drafted counterparts. (The record of coaching camp invitees has a number of gamers with years of expertise abroad however none in the WNBA.) On another roster, they may individually be labeled as the rookie or the teenager or the one participant attempting to interrupt by way of.
But there’s no use in that right here. Nothing about that stands out this season in D.C. Those circumstances fill practically the entire roster as an alternative.
“You have to sort of break the ice, but once that happened, we were just yapping… There was no awkward silence,” stated Dugalic, whom the Mystics chosen at No. 9. “We were talking about each other’s lives, our college experiences, everything that you could possibly talk about. And it was really nice, because I think we all have the same mentality of—we’re obviously trying to make the team, and, you know, that stands. But at the same time, we can make this process enjoyable.”
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