‘A natural fit’: Spokane astronaut Anne McClain lends likeness for 2026 Hoopfest promos

Spokane’s favorite astronaut will be adding some galactic star power to one of the Lilac City’s largest community events this summer.

U.S. Army Col. Anne McClain has seen a lot. She’s blasted through Earth’s atmosphere, taken a few jaunts through space in nothing but a suit and witnessed the unbounded universe; it’s not easy to surprise her.

But when she got the call to be a part of the world’s largest 3-on-3 basketball tournament, she was at a loss of words.

“It was great to hear from them,” McClain said, “I still feel like that little kid from Spokane, so I think it still surprises me that they would want me on the poster.”

Spokane’s downtown will become “the world’s court” once again this summer as hundreds of basketball hoops are shuttled into the streets spanning 45 blocks for Hoopfest. McClain will be laced throughout the event, as she’s teamed up with Hoopfest and Spokane advertising agency Propaganda Creative to bring the cosmos to her hometown.

Hoopfest’s executive director, Riley Stockton – who’s no stranger to local legends, being the nephew of Hall of Fame point guard John Stockton – knew from the get-go that there was no better fit than McClain to be the face of the Spokane’s most anticipated summer weekend.

It’s a “good thing,” Stockton said, that someone at “that level and how high she is and in her field would want to be involved” in Hoopfest. “… We are extremely lucky and honored to have her on the poster.”

This year’s focal point is a departure from previous years, said Propaganda Creative’s co-owner, Kyle Hurley.

“It’s the first year that it hasn’t been a basketball subject. We had Mark Few, the Groves brothers. It’s the first year it’s just been a cool local native person that has some kind of profile outside of just basketball,” Hurley said. “She was a natural fit.”

Propaganda Creative has been doing the designs and marketing for Hoopfest since 2018, and there’s usually a back-and-forth dialogue to come up with the concept of Hoopfest’s theme. But this year, everybody was on the same page.

“I just think it was serendipitous how it came together,” Propaganda Creative’s co-owner Jason Clerget said.

Before any strategizing or brainstorming, Clerget and Hurley went into their initial meeting and were pleasantly surprised that they shared the thought about having McClain on the poster, Hurley said.

Stockton’s team coordinated with McClain to get a window of time from her busy schedule for a photoshoot. During McClain’s visit with her family around Christmas, just nine months after SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket propelled the Dragon spacecraft into orbit with McClain as NASA SpaceX Crew10’s commander, she showed up to Propaganda Creative’s office camera ready. She dressed in her pristine blue NASA jumpsuit with intricately stitched mission patches and insignias.

Propaganda Creative’s art director, Shane Schantz, said she could tell McClain meant business.

“She was pumped,” Schantz said. “Typically when you shoot people who don’t do photo shoots a lot, you have to direct them constantly on moving and posing. But apparently, being an astronaut, you’re getting shot a lot. She was actually kind of like a model.”

The two-hour photo shoot was filled with different angles and poses to capture an average workday for the NASA astronaut, such as getting a shot from above pointed downward on a ladder to give the illusion of being suspended in zero gravity.

“It felt almost like it was muscle memory for her to feel like she was floating,” Schantz said.

McClain played in Hoopfest a couple times growing up in Spokane, but she admitted she never saw the sport as her strong suit.

“I think it was clear I haven’t held a basketball much. They wanted a shot of me spinning a basketball on my finger, and my response was to ask how good they were at Photoshop,” McClain said.

Schantz was in charge of creating the toolkit for Hoopfest’s marketing team, which included the fonts to use, how to use them, how it appears on social media, and T-shirts and poster concepts.

Propaganda Creative’s design for last year’s Hoopfest revolved around a medieval theme, so they thought it was only appropriate to go on the other end of the spectrum and lean into a retro-futuristic design.

Hoopfest suggested the look to the designers in their initial meetings, pulling out examples of old radar controls and UI screens and a green-on-black pixelated look to generate inspiration, Schantz said.

After testing various colors and textures, the designs evolved into a slick, utilitarian type of layout, something you’d see in films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars or from NASA in the ’70s or ’80s. In addition to the Hoopfest logo having a code-based typography feel to it, some of the marketing materials will contain retro-futuristic icons that represent rules in basketball, such as an “X” that represents a referee signaling a foul.

Since they began collaborating, the Hoopfest team puts a lot of faith into Propaganda Creative with creating their designs and grants them full creative freedom, Hurley said.

Hoopfest’s launch countdown began Monday, when it released the official McClain poster that will soon start popping up all around town.

“Our hope is to put the poster in every school and so that people can look up to her and go, you know, ‘Hey, this is a kid from Spokane. I can do what she does. There’s nothing stopping me,’ ” Stockton said.

The group will provide first looks at other merchandise, such as basketballs and T-shirts, periodically down the road as the June 27-28 event approaches.

With summer being just around the corner, Stockton is heartened with the early player registrations and anticipates more to pile in.

Stockton wants the theme of “the world’s court” to expand past Spokane’s city limits, to encourage basketball fans from around the globe to lace up their sneakers and experience an out-of-this-world weekend.

“It doesn’t matter where you come from or where you are, Hoopfest has a spot for you,” Stockton said. “When we say it’s the best basketball weekend on Earth, we mean it.”

Despite her having reached great heights, McClain still looks below to reflect on her love for the Lilac City.

“Some of my best memories growing up were attending events downtown, or at Comstock and Manito parks, or at the ski hills or lakes, McClain said, “I proudly claim Spokane as my hometown, and it is awesome that it claims me back.”