StingRays Close Shop After a Year

American Basketball League executives did something Wednesday most of its teams couldn’t last season.

They made the Long Beach StingRays disappear.

The women’s pro league, citing financial losses by the team last season, closed the franchise after one season.

And just like that, the StingRays are gone . . . players divvied up to the nine remaining ABL teams, eight front-office staffers terminated and the team’s powder blue uniforms on their way to the memorabilia bin.

Coach Maura McHugh and General Manager Bill McGillis will be reassigned, the ABL said. McGillis might become general manger of the Columbus Quest, a source said.

ABL chief Gary Cavalli called the move painful but necessary, adding this was the end of a wave of major cutbacks. League staffers took a 10% pay cut recently.

“The major bloodletting is over,” he said. “I’m tired, this is enough pain.”

It’s the second ABL franchise closure. The Atlanta Glory was closed in March.

Cavalli said the league will play its coming season, which begins the first week of November.

“We’ve had to take a hard look at everything to improve the bottom line, to run this like a business,” he said. “This was extremely difficult, when you consider the human factor. Unfortunately, revenues from season ticket and corporate sponsorship sales in Long Beach have fallen well short of expectations.”

Playing home games at Long Beach State’s 4,200-seat Pyramid, the expansion StingRays frequently drew crowds that numbered in the hundreds. Crowds grew somewhat near season’s end--there were two late sellouts--but the team ended up a distant last in attendance.

But Long Beach flopped at the gate, not on the court.

The team finished 26-18, behind Western Conference champion Portland (27-17), then beat Colorado and Portland in the playoffs before meeting Eastern Conference champion Columbus in the five-game finals.

The StingRays defeated Columbus twice in Long Beach, then lost all three in Columbus.

Guard Beverly Williams was in the StingRays’ Long Beach World Trade Center offices Wednesday when the ax fell.

“It was very sad, there were some tears,” she said.

“I’d heard a rumor from my agent that this might come. It’s so disappointing--we were coming back this season with another good team, I feel like we were denied the opportunity to show we can make this work here.”

Shortly after last season, a major StingRay story:

The Portland Power’s Natalie Williams, the ABL’s MVP, invoked a contract clause requiring the league to trade her to the StingRays.

It triggered a deal that sent Yolanda Griffith to the ABL’s expansion Chicago Condors.

Williams wanted to play in Long Beach because the Pyramid is 10 minutes from her Seal Beach home.

Now, she’s back in Portland, 985 miles from home--again.

Rhonda Smith also was assigned to Portland. Beverly Williams was assigned to the Columbus Quest; Cass Bauer and Katrina Price to the Philadelphia Rage; Clarissa Davis-Wrightsil and Pam Hudson to the San Jose Lasers; Stacey Lovelace to the New England Blizzard; Andrea Nagy to the Seattle Reign, and Deanna Tate to the Chicago Condors. Wednesday’s news came one month before players from the remaining ABL teams report to training camps, Sept. 28. The 44-game season begins the first week of November.

The league schedule is being reworked and will be released by Sept. 1, the ABL said Wednesday.