The Adelaide Lightning is an

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n professional women's basketball team competing in the

Women's National Basketball League The Women's National Basketball League (WNBL) is the pre-eminent professional women's basketball league in Australia. It is currently composed of eight teams. The league was founded in 1981 and is the women's counterpart to the National Baske ...

( WNBL). The club is based in the city of Adelaide, South Australia. The club was formed in 1993 and they play in the 8,000-seat Titanium Security Arena.

History

The Adelaide Lightning were formed in 1993 and started playing out of the Clipsal Powerhouse. Since the early 2000s the team has tended to alternate between their current home at the Adelaide Arena (formerly the Powerhouse) and the Wayville Sports Centre located within the

Adelaide Showgrounds The Adelaide Showground holds many of Adelaide's most popular events, including the Royal Adelaide Show. The Showground (also popularly known as the Wayville Showgrounds) is located in the inner-southern Adelaide suburb of Wayville, just so ...

. The Lightning have won the WNBL Championship five times (1994, 1995, 1996, 1998 and 2008). The club's captain during its glory years of the 1990s was three time Olympian, twice WNBL MVP and club games record holder (304) Rachael Sporn. Sporn is also the only Lightning player to have her number (14) retired by the club. Other

Opals Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) is a spacecraft communication instrument developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that was tested on the International Space Station (ISS) from 18 April 2014 to 17 July 2014 to demonstrate the te ...

to have played with the Lightning include Jenny Whittle,

Carla Boyd Carla Maree Boyd (; born 31 October 1975, in Wynyard, Tasmania) is an Australian former professional basketball player in the WNBA as a forward for the Detroit Shock. She won a bronze (1996) and a silver (2000) medal with the Austral ...

, Jo Hill,

Kristi Harrower Kristi Harrower (born 4 March 1975) is an Australian professional basketball player, who three times (2000, 2004 and 2008) won the silver medal with the Australian Women's Team at the Summer Olympics, and also the bronze in 2012. She played in ...

, Erin Phillips, Jae Kingi-Cross,

Marina Moffa Marina Moffa (m. Wood, born 17 April 1964) is a former Australian women's basketball player. Biography Moffa played for the national team between 1983 and 1995, competing at two Olympic Games; 1984 and 1988. Moffa also represented Australia a ...

Tracey Beatty Tracey Lea Rowley Beatty (''née'' Braithwaite, born 9 March 1979) is a retired Australian women's basketball player, who represented the country at both junior and senior levels.Women's National Basketball League. Player ProfileTracey Beatty F ...

and

Suzy Batkovic-Brown Suzy Batkovic (born 17 December 1980 in Lambton, New South Wales, Australia) is an Australian professional basketball player and politician. Suzy played her junior basketball with the Port Hunter Basketball Club in Newcastle. She has played bas ...

. As of the 2013–14 WNBL season, the Lightning and Adelaide's men's NBL team the Adelaide 36ers entered into a merger which saw the two teams share the same management team. This also saw the Lightning move their home games exclusively played at the Adelaide Arena where they would play a number of double headers with the 36ers, ensuring larger home attendances for the Lightning and raising the profile of the team. The return to the 8,000 seat Adelaide Arena gives the Lightning easily the largest current venue in the WNBL (the Arena seats some 2,800 more than the AIS Arena in

Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...

, while most other WNBL venues can seat around 2,000 - 2,500). On 5 March 2019, Mr Bruce Spangler, Chairman of Arena Stadium Management announced that he and another business person had negotiated with the WNBL to take over the licence from Adelaide Basketball who were going to hand in the WNBL Club licence at the end of the 2018-19 season. A new sustainable model has now been released for the public to be involved in.

Season-by-season records

Source
Adelaide Lightning

Statistics

Players

Current roster

Honour roll

References

External links

Official team website
{{Adelaide Sports Teams Basketball clubs in Adelaide Women's National Basketball League teams Basketball teams established in 1993 1993 establishments in Australia Sporting clubs in Adelaide