Shooters shoot!
“She didn’t talk to me,” Stewart, 26,tells PEOPLEof Xargay Casademont, 30, only half-joking. They met while playing in the Russian women’s basketball league for theDynamo Kurskduring the 2018-19 season.
Because Xargay Casademont and Stewart both already had friends on the team, they didn’t really get to know each other during the season.
“She was in Russia way before me, I came later,” Stewart, who now helps lead the WNBA Seattle Storm, says. “I was trying to figure out the team. … But then, as it went on, I [started] building the relationship with all of my teammates.”
She adds, “And then having more of an interest in Marta, but still, you know, nervous to do anything.”
“You didn’t want to mess it up!” Xargay Casademont quips to Stewart.
Breanna Stewart/Instagram
At the same time, the Spanish-native shooting guard was slowly developing a crush, too.
“You can see from outside. You can see how she was to people, the way she was acting and how her personality was,” shares Xargay Casademont. “One day, it clicked. I don’t know!”
Stewart, known affectionately to fans as “Stewie,“ruptured her Achilles tendonwhile playing in Russia in 2019. Her relationship with Xargay Casademont grew more serious as she recovered back home in the U.S.
The pair had planned to spend time in Barcelona together later that year, but Stewart had a surprise in store first: Just days after she was cleared to walk, Stewart flew to Serbia to cheer on her now-wife in a EuroBasket quarterfinal game.
Xargay Casademont’s best friend made up an elaborate story to get her to go downstairs, where Stewart met her.
“I remember, I was posting a thing on Instagram, and all of the sudden, I saw someone standing in front of me, and it was her,” Xargay Casademont recounts. “For 10 minutes, I was looking at her, like, ‘Is this real?’ "
Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty
Since then, Xargay Casademont has retired from professional basketball after a successful career, which included playing for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and winning the silver medal on the Spanish national team at the 2016 Olympics.
Stewart and the Storm are finishing out their season, following a 2020 championship win in the"Wubble.“There, she was named Finals MVP for the second time after averaging over 28 points and 7 rebounds in the series.
Together, the couple has paired withAlly Financialto helpencourage partners to talk openlyabout their finances, like they did before starting a family.
Though it’s been challenging already for the couple — Stewart shares that it “obviously sucked” returning to the court a week after their daughter was born — they know the example they’re setting will be well worth it.
Along with her team, the WNBA champ waswelcomed into the White Houseon Monday, where President Joe Biden gave them an impromptu tour of the Oval Office.
source: people.com
