Last Summer, as the city dithered and fans worried over whether the SuperSonics would leave Seattle, and the state, Anne Levinson picked up the phone. It was the first in a series of calls to the Oklahoma City offices of Sonics and WNBA Storm chairman Clay Bennett.

"I expressed my concern to Clay that the Storm were being lost in the broader discussion regarding the future of the Sonics," says Levinson.

At the time of Levinson's call, Bennett still held out hope that he would be able to land public funding for a new $550 million basketball arena in Renton. No such funding ever materialized and the prospects for the Sonics staying in Seattle are not good.

But the Storm have a future in Seattle, thanks to the efforts of Levinson and three other women -- Lisa Brummel, a senior vice president at Microsoft; Dawn Trudeau, a former Microsoftie; and Ginny Gilder, a two-time Olympic athlete who won a silver medal in rowing in 1984. The four put together an investment package and bought the eightyear- old Women's National Basketball Association franchise for $10 million.

The new owners named their investment Force 10 Hoops, a play on the Beaufort wind force scale, which measures wind velocity at sea. The intent behind the name is plain -- these women see themselves as a force to be reckoned with, and they mean to keep the Storm playing on the hardwood at KeyArena for years to come.

The women of Force 10 Hoops have their work cut out for them. Four WNBA franchises have folded during the league's 11-year existence. But Levinson, Brummel, Trudeau and Gilder didn't buy into the world of professional women's sports because it's easy; they got into it because they relish a good challenge.

And a challenge it has been since the beginning. Getting the deal done with Bennett's ownership group, the Professional Basketball Club, was anything but easy. From the outset, it was clear the two sides couldn't have been more different.

"Clay's group is from a conservative part of the country. We're from a very progressive city. His partners are all men. We're all women of varying backgrounds," says Levinson, a former judge, deputy mayor of Seattle under Norm Rice and chair of the state Utilities and Transportation Commission. "But I felt one of the problems with all the discussions around the Sonics and Storm up to that point was that everyone was too focused on their differences."

At the time of their initial conversation, Bennett made it clear the Storm was not for sale. Indeed, at least two other investment groups had offered to buy the Storm, only to be rebuffed, Levinson says.

"I told Clay that we wanted to help keep the Storm here, but that the top priority was to keep the two franchises together and find an arena solution so they could remain together in the region," says Levinson, who now works as a public policy consultant. Levinson believes that it was her willingness to work toward finding a solution that would keep the teams together that led to Bennett taking her group seriously as buyers later.

CLOSING THE DEAL

After a few more conversations in July, Bennett and Levinson agreed to stay in touch over the summer. By mid-September, the prospects for getting an arena deal in place were grim. Meantime, Bennett and Levinson had continued talking by phone and, on occasion, in person. He agreed to have the Storm organization exercise its lease option for another season at KeyArena. Bennett also agreed to leave the Storm out of his early November request to the NBA to relocate the Sonics to Oklahoma City.