On Saturday April 11, 2026, the Boston Fleet sold out the Boston TD Garden, while losing 0-1 to the Montreal Victoire. Does it matter when New England women’s teams are always the guests in predominantly men’s sports arenas?
Written by Laura Everett; Edited by Abbi Holt
(Boston) New England’s women’s teams get to visit the cathedrals of sports in Boston, but will they ever reside in these hallowed halls?
Are we always destined to be road warriors, moving between other people’s arenas, guests in spaces never built specifically for us?
We’ve written this story at least twice before:
First, in January 2024, when the Boston Beanpot finally allowed women’s college hockey teams to play at the Garden. The men’s tournament started 26 years before the women were allowed to play, and the men have been playing at the Garden for 28 years before the tournament directors allowed women to play at the same venue. When finally allowed to play (on less desirable nights and times- Tuesday night with a non-functional MBTA green line), the women sold out the lower bowl of TD Garden for a total of 10,633 fans, all of the tickets released for the game. Everyone could clap about how wonderful it was that the women were finally there, but no one seemed to talk about what was owed to the women’s programs for their decades of unjust benching.
Second, in August 2024, when the Connecticut Sun were finally allowed to play at the Garden, the traditional home of the men’s NBA Boston Celtics. The Celtics began in 1946, while the Sun began in 1999, giving the men a 53 year head start. When finally allowed to play at the Garden, a whopping 78 years after their “brother team,” the Connecticut Sun sold out the Garden in its basketball seating configuration, on a Tuesday in August with 19,125 fans, when God herself was vacationing on the Vineyard.
And arguably a third time, more recently we’ve written about a Boston women’s team selling out a men’s home venue: in March 2026 when the Boston Legacy were allowed (or forced because White Stadium is not completed on time) to play at Gillette Stadium where the New England Revolution play, selling out all the tickets released for a team-declared sell out of 30,207, three times the size of their future home of White Stadium.
Add in the dynastic Boston Renegades, with their team now on tragically paused, have historically played in Revere at Harry Dello Russo Stadium, a high school football field, all the while winning five national championships.
This Saturday, the Boston Fleet finally were allowed to play in the Boston Garden, a full 98 years after the Bruins started playing in the Garden in 1928.
Across every professional women’s sport in Boston, a consistent theme emerges:
We may win national championships, like the Boston Pride and Boston Renegades.
We may sell out “men’s” arenas, like the Sun and Legacy women’s teams did.
But we do not get to call any of these venues home.
Not permanently.
We may only be guests.
We may only visit.
Our presence is provisional.
Leagues will fold; teams will pause.
Teams may even be sold out of state, like the Connecticut Sun’s recent sale and relocation to Houston.
Boston’s women’s sports teams, like many Bostonians, appear destined to be renters, never owners of their homes.
We are guests in our own city.
But our turnout, yet again, shows that we deserve so much more.
How long until investors wake up to the purchasing power of Boston women’s sports fans?
Earlier this week New York Sirens were finally granted access to their own garden in Madison Square. Fans showed up and showed up well to a record breaking 18,006 fans.
Boston Fleet ticket holders waited in long lines outside women’s bathrooms because no one at the Garden was thinking about a majority women’s event clearly enough to change some toilets signage around to make the historic Garden more hospitable. We heard from fans of simply “taking over” a “men’s” bathroom, where there were no other people using it.
So, while we are glad to write about how very good, and it was very good, we are tired of writing this story of how glorious it was that 17,850 fans show up.
Because still in a sea of hunter and mint green,
Among waves of Keller, Rattray, and Frankel jerseys, the Bruins logo was still at center ice.
Not the Fleet.
A fan’s sign read, “The Boston Fleet Deserve to Play Here” to thunderous cheers.
But the next game will return to Lowell on a weeknight, to Tsongas Arena, which seats a maximum of 6,500 fans for a hockey game.
Yet now we got a taste of what we deserved: full house, in town, at the big kids table, with public transit.
We know we can do. We can fill the house.
The camera person knew the crowd, focusing in on a ticket holder who had a shirt on that read in part “Lesbian Fans Fill Your Stands.” As the two top of the table teams played to a draw until late in the third period in an increasingly chippy game, the camera zoomed in to show a sign reading, “Let Girls Fight.”
There were fans in Heated Rivalry costumes, men kissing on camera. And we wondered, “Is this is the gayest sports event we’ve ever been to?”
Every level was filled, every section full. The vibe was immaculate. So why not come back?
We are tired of this annual charade for women:
Of one WNBA game at the Garden.
Of one visit from the Beanpot.
Of the itinerant homestands of Boston Legacy moving between Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Boston’s women’s teams deserve the stable homes of Boston’s men’s teams.
Meanwhile, the Boston Globe relegated the historic sell-out to page five of the sports section, while a Bruins loss made the front page.
After the game, Jane Guay, a journalist from the Boston University Daily Free Press asked head coach Kris Sparre about the balance of how he wanted to be talking about the first of their kind experience of playing at the Garden and attendance numbers, versus talking about the game of hockey itself. He said, “The balance? Sorry, I didn’t understand the question.”
Listen below for the rest of his response:
We posed a similar question, a hockey assist if you will, to Boston Fleet captain Megan Keller:
Megan Keller is captaining the Boston team that is battling for top of the table, having already clinched a playoff spot. She’s just won an Olympic Gold medal. She’s sold out the Boston Garden on the first attempt, after women’s teams have been benched for 98 years.
We deserve more than hoping that this is not the last time.
We deserve to be home here.
Boston Women's Sports 
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