Roku's 'Gamechangers: Mother/Athlete' Premieres at Martha's Vineyard Film Festival
A new documentary from Roku puts the spotlight on WNBA players who are also mothers — and the league's long, slow catch-up to support them.
'Gamechangers: Mother/Athlete', a Roku Original directed by Christine Turner, made its world premiere at the 24th annual Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival. The screening, presented by The Roku Channel, was followed by a conversation with Turner and basketball legend Sheryl Swoopes (MVAAFF).
The film follows five WNBA stars across the league's history: Sheryl Swoopes, Skylar Diggins-Smith, Bria Hartley, Natalie Achonwa and Allison Feaster. Roku's press release describes it as taking viewers behind the scenes of the WNBA to explore the balance between basketball greatness and motherhood (Roku Newsroom).
Swoopes carries a singular place in that history. She was the first woman to sign with the WNBA ahead of its inaugural season in 1997 — the league was established that year and is funded by the NBA. She then discovered she was pregnant just before the league's first season tipped off (Variety).
The WNBA did not offer fully paid maternity leave until 2018 — more than two decades after Swoopes suited up for that first season. That gap between the personal and the professional is the territory the documentary set out to map, tracking how later generations of players navigated the same terrain with different tools.
For a general audience, the appeal is straightforward: a sports story about people who had to fight for basic workplace protections most employees take for granted, told through the athletes who lived it. The "Gamechangers" series, of which this is a part, is Roku's branded documentary banner on its free streaming platform, The Roku Channel.
Roku announced the project via press release on July 9, 2026. 'Gamechangers: Mother/Athlete' will stream free on The Roku Channel in the fall (Roku Newsroom; Variety).
