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Within 72 hours of landing back in the Bay Area, Marta Suárez set out to test her memory. The Cal women’s basketball locker room code she remembered from a year ago, before she departed her fifth and final season of college basketball at Texas Christian — did it still work?

The keypad beeped. The door clicked open. And a few minutes later, Suárez was back on the court at Haas Pavilion, ball in hand, getting shots up in a gym full of memories collected over two seasons as a Bear. 

She surprised a few former teammates who remain close friends and turned the Berkeley visit into an afternoon catching up and reminiscing. A walk around campus felt like no time had passed at all. 

It was here, more than two years ago, that Suárez first learned that the Bay Area would be getting a WNBA expansion team when the approval came in 2023. She was overjoyed, she said, and the franchise immediately took a special place in her heart. Now, she returns as a member of the Golden State Valkyries. 

“To play for a franchise that is new and successful, and then to have that be in the backyard of where she had a great college career  — she’s getting the storybook situation,” seven-year Cal head coach Charmin Smith said. 

Smith, an avid Valkyries supporter and inaugural season-ticket holder, noticed a heavy presence of Golden State personnel when she attended TCU’s Elite Eight matchup against South Carolina a few weeks ago in Sacramento to watch Suárez. It gave her a strong sense that Suárez might land here — though nearly no one else saw it coming.

The green room in New York, the ESPN broadcast, and fans on social media were all stunned on draft night as Golden State dealt the No. 8 pick, Flau’jae Johnson, to the Seattle Storm in exchange for Suárez at No. 16 and a future second-rounder. Valkyries fans, given 45 minutes to steep in excitement over Johnson’s selection, were baffled at the flip — and the lack of an explanation thereafter. GM Ohemaa Nyanin later said the move was premeditated in coordination with the Storm.

Suárez, who was rocking a green-and-yellow Storm hat and riding a high after walking across the stage, was shocked. She watched Cathy Engelbert take the podium unexpectedly and heard a collective gasp from the room.

“I saw my name. I saw purple. And I was like, ‘No way,’” Suárez said when the Valkyries introduced her at a press conference last week. None of the drama seemed to faze her. She swapped out for a violet hat and a feather boa to match. “I was so happy, so blessed, and so ready to come home.”

Back at her table in front of the stage sat two friends and her father, watching her dream come true and quietly realizing that Suárez’s time in the U.S. might be a “little longer than expected.” Away from her hometown of Oviedo, Spain, she has found a home in the Bay Area, in its culture, its diversity, its art — Suárez is a devoted painter who has arrived at practices with paint on her hands — and its fierce appreciation for women’s basketball even before the Valkyries came to be.

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Growing up in Spain, she fell in love with the game through whatever glimpses she could find: international tournaments, Olympic competition, the documentary “Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals,” and the NBA success of Pau Gasol, the most accomplished Spanish player. 

That Cal-Stanford rivalry was central to how Suárez came to understand the depth of women’s basketball culture in the Bay Area — a history shaped by decades of competition and legacy. In that context, she helped Smith’s Bears break through a five-year losing streak to the Cardinal in 2024, a game Suárez recalls celebrating like it was a Final Four win and vividly remembers the program’s 20-point blowout the following season, the largest margin of victory Cal has ever had in the series. 

In Suárez, the Valkyries are adding a 6-foot-3 forward who’s a versatile playmaker and an ever-improving shooter. She’s fresh off a First Team All-Big 12 selection with the Horned Frogs, averaging 17.1 points and 7.4 rebounds per game and leading TCU to its deepest postseason run in program history alongside star Olivia Miles. 

A year prior, she anchored the Bears (opens in new tab) in the program’s first NCAA tournament berth since 2019. The time in between was spent fixated on improving her 3-point shot, sharpening her finishing around the hoop, and expanding her ability to create shots while also developing her passing.

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Smith, who recruited Suárez out of high school in Spain and successfully lured her to Berkeley after Suárez spent two seasons with Tennessee, has seen her continued development up close: a threat on the block, on the perimeter, in the pick-and-pop actions; a big who can have the ball in her hands; an all-around weapon. 

“She has great confidence, and it really helps fuel not only her but her teammates. She’s not afraid of anything,” Smith said. “That’s the thing that I respect most about Marta — there’s nothing that she’s afraid of, no task too challenging. She will always embrace it and attack it.”

Now her new coach — of just under a week — agrees. 

“A winner and a worker,” head coach Natalie Nakase called the rookie on Day 3 of training camp. “Her flexibility, her IQ, her competitiveness — Marta’s fitting just perfectly.”

Smith, as she predicts a swarm of Cal fans ready to support Suárez this summer at Chase Center, gets to see the whole arc clearly now — from recruiting an international teenager to watching her return as a pro just a bridge away. 

“This is what you want for your players,” she said. “To be successful at the highest level.”

For Suárez, that success is the culmination of all that came before it.