Indiana Fever players and staff are calling Bradenton, Florida home for the summer in an abbreviated 2020 regular season. It is a change of scenery compared to practicing and playing in front of the home crowd in Indianapolis for the 21^st season of Indiana Fever basketball.

Players are sacrificing seeing family and friends from all over the country to play a season they have never experienced before.

For Fever guard Kennedy Burke, that means not being able to play in her hometown of Los Angeles. It will be a different feeling for Burke on Wednesday when the Fever take on the Sparks at 10 p.m. No family in attendance. No return home. It won’t have the same feeling as last August when the Fever took the trip out west to take on the Sparks.

Burke was born in Northridge, California, prepped at Sierra Canyon and played her college basketball at UCLA. Three noteworthy stops while being submersed in a basketball hotbed.

As her game evolved, she remembered hearing about a certain trait that followed basketball players coming from Southern California.

“They say Cali’ girls are soft,” she stated with a sardonic grin.

During games, Fever fans will likely find her under the rim or in the paint scraping for rebounds and loose balls to add an extra offensive possession, the characteristics some think do not exist when describing a basketball player from her area.

A rewarding collegiate career with the Bruins, highlighted as the third leading shot blocker in program history, led her to Indiana after being waived by Dallas early in her pro career. Burke earned an experience unlike any other on August 22 during her rookie campaign because of her efforts to shed the false label of being ‘soft’.

While watching film with her Fever teammates ahead of a road game against the hometown Sparks, Burke was notified she would later make her first career WNBA start. The stars aligned in Los Angeles for a copacetic return home.

“It was a bittersweet moment because I was back home in Los Angeles after being in Indiana for just a few months playing and I wasn’t anticipating on starting,” Burke recalled. “I told my family to just go to the game because I didn’t know I was going to be starting until we had that film session.”

The unexpected, yet cherished, moment for Burke resulted in playing more than 34 minutes and tallying seven points for the Fever in front of friends and family.

For someone who spends her playing career defying the aforementioned athletic trait of being ‘soft’, this season will prove Burke’s toughness and focus more than ever as the Fever navigate the most uncertain and tumultuous WNBA season ever played.

The focus from Burke could also come from the experience of sharing a ninth-grade biology class at Sierra Canyon with the effervescent presence of then classmate, Kylie Jenner, and maintain the ability to not be distracted.

“When I was at Sierra Canyon, I was there to focus on school and basketball. I wasn’t paying as much attention to who I was around or who someone’s parent was,” Burke added.

Burke’s basketball journey has taken her across the globe and she has landed in a pivotal role with the Fever, but California will always be where it started. Burke’s first start against the Sparks will never be forgotten as she navigates through her career. The memories and tremendous work ethic remain engrained in Burke, but remember one thing about the 6-foot-1 guard when the ball gets rolled out: “When it comes to this game, I’m not soft.”