From Basketball Fan to Owner: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “FAN Club”

 

Discovered the Former Co-Owner of the LA Sparks Team is My Cousin

Carla Jean Cristofferson: 1967-Now. (Paternal Second Cousin 2x Removed)

 

I’m not exactly following the real intent of this particular 52 Weeks, 52 Ancestors prompt. FAN Club refers to using Friends, Associates and Neighbors – F,A, and N—to help track ancestors and learn about their lives. I was having trouble coming up with an interesting example of using the method. So instead, I decided to write about a cousin who was part of a more traditional type of fan club—people who support a performer, or in this case a sports team.

While cleaning up errors in my family tree with the help of Ancestry’s Tree Checker program, I briefly researched a more distant cousin, the great-great grandchild of my grand-uncle Jacob Joramo. Carla Jean Cristofferson was born in Tolna, North Dakota, to parents Jerry Elwood Christofferson and Edna Gleason. She played basketball as a young woman in high school and junior college. In addition, she competed in beauty pageants, winning the title of Miss North Dakota USA in 1989, which qualified her to compete in the Miss USA competition.

She graduated from the University of North Dakota and the Yale Law School, becoming a lawyer and partner with the Los Angeles office of the O’Melveny & Myers firm. She still loved basketball, and she  became a season-ticket holder of the LA Sparks, a WNBA team. Carla became friends with another fan, Kathy Goodman, and in 2006 they put together an investment group and bought the team from previous owner Jerry Buss. They were among the first women owners of a professional sports team.

LA Sparks game. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Carla was part-owner of the team for eight years until Magic Johnson and Mark Walter bought the Sparks in 2014. She is now the managing partner at O’Melveny & Myers, and is still a fan of the WNBA.

It was fun discovering that a relative—distant, but still related!—had been a part owner of a women’s basketball franchise. She has built an amazing career in the law and in the sports world.

Sources:

“New Breed of Tycoon Brings Order to the Court”. Karen Crouse. New York Times. April 11, 2008. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/sports/basketball/11sparks.html

“UND student captures state pageant title.” The Bismarck Tribune. Bismarck, North Dakota. Jan. 12, 1989.

Interview. Yale Law Women+. https://ylw.yale.edu/carla-christofferson/

Photo of LA Sparks game. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Los_angeles_Sparks_vs_Chicago_Sky,_July_14,_2022_(26).JPG