Newton South High School graduate Veronica Burton will play for a WNBA championship Saturday, Oct. 31, when the Golden State Valkyries host the Atlanta Dream in a deciding Game 7.
Tipoff at Chase Center in San Francisco is 8 p.m. ET, with coverage on USA Network, Peacock and CNBC, according to the WNBA’s game listing. Neither franchise has won a championship.
The matchup is the first Game 7 in WNBA Finals history. The league introduced a best-of-seven championship series in 2025.
Burton, 26, has helped lead Golden State through its second season. She averaged career highs of 12.2 points and 1.6 steals during the regular season, along with 5.7 assists and 3.6 rebounds, and earned her second consecutive All-Defensive Second Team selection.
Her defense stood out in Game 5, when she finished with 13 points, eight rebounds and four blocks. The blocks tied Diana Taurasi’s 2009 record for the most by a guard in a Finals game, according to Golden State’s postgame notes.
Atlanta forced the deciding game with an 80-69 victory Thursday, Oct. 29. Allisha Gray scored 23 points and Rhyne Howard added 21, according to the WNBA recap.
Burton said afterward that playing at home would not make the final step easy.
“Both teams want it, so the mindset is a sense of urgency. It is do or die,” she said, according to Cassius Life.
Burton graduated from Newton South in 2018 after earning four Dual County League MVP awards and scoring 1,817 career points, Fig City News reported. Her former high school coach, Joe Rogers, still helps train her in Newton during the offseason.
At Northwestern, Burton won three Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year awards. Dallas selected her seventh overall in the 2022 draft, but waived her during training camp in 2024. She joined Connecticut before Golden State selected her in the December 2024 expansion draft.
Burton became the WNBA’s Most Improved Player in Golden State’s inaugural season and signed a multiyear contract this spring. Saturday, she has a chance to add a championship.
