Travis Charles moved countries, applied to over 500 jobs and slept at the arena. The Dallas Wings exec credits his drive to his Scarborough roots.
Inside the office of Travis Charles, it doesn’t take long to recognize where the vice-president of basketball operations of the WNBA’s Dallas Wings is from.
With the job demanding his time all-year round, Charles has been away from home so long that he still refers to Scotiabank Arena as the Air Canada Centre, and for him the Rogers Centre will forever be known as SkyDome. Charles is already preparing for the Wings’ next season, set to start in May, hoping to make the playoffs for the third straight year and expand on last season’s third-place finish in the Western Conference.
“I was away from my family, I was away from my friends. I had no money. My career didn’t seem like it had any legs at the time. I didn’t know where I was going next,” said Charles. “People that are not in sports don’t understand. go get a regular job. I could probably do that, but would that make me happy?”
The two built a strong bond and Charles ended up as an intern with the Dream. He remembers being in Toronto when he received the news — one of the last times he’d be in the city — before starting the internship. It was unpaid at the time, but he didn’t care. “Growing up where I grew up in Scarborough, it was just competitive in everything you wanted,” said Charles. “From Victoria Park, me and my boys rode our bikes to the SkyDome just to see who could do it first, for no reason. This is before cellphones. Parents going crazy. It was all love, but it was so competitive, that area; it competition.”
Their relationship blossomed to the point where Williams accepted a head coaching job with the Tulsa Shock after being let go in Atlanta, and offered Charles a job as video co-ordinator. In the next few years, Charles got a taste of almost every job as the WNBA team in Tulsa relocated to Dallas in 2016. He was manager of basketball logistics for a few seasons, and even assistant coach for part of one year.
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