Clarissa Flores, a former Northwestern University guard and director of operations for Tao Group Hospitality in Chicago, is opening a sports bar that caters to women’s sports. Level Sporting Club is set to open at the end of April in the heart of Wrigleyville.

“I’m not here competing with a regular sports bar,” Flores said. “I’m bringing a women’s sports bar for women’s sports fans at the entertainment corridor of Chicago, where we belong.” 

Level Sporting Club, a two-level space at 3343 N. Clark St., will offer cocktails, food and themed programming. Flores said she was inspired to open her own bar when another sports bar for women, The Sports Bra, opened in Portland, Oregon, in 2022. 

“Having my background in hospitality and loving it, it’s in my blood,” Flores said, “and my passion for sports, for me, it was a no-brainer.”

A few other women sports bars have opened in Chicago recently; Whiskey Girl Tavern, opened in 2022, and Babes, opened in 2025. 

Flores describes herself as “Flippe Rican” or “Puerto Pino,” — half Puerto Rican, half Filipino. She said the investor team for Level Sporting Club is mostly made up of a mix of queer women, former athletes and people of color. 

“This bar is bigger than just being a bar,” she said. “It’s about representation, and that’s another reason why I chose the team that I did.”

Flores was born and raised in Chicago and attended Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, where she played basketball. She remembers competing in a city championship against John Marshall Metropolitan High School in 1997 at the University of Illinois Chicago Pavillion, now called Credit Union 1 Arena. She said about 7,000 people came to see a rivalry between high school girls’ teams, showing her that women’s sports are interesting to people. As she sees it, fans just didn’t have the infrastructure to watch them. 

“The viewership is growing, but the momentum and the love and the passion has always been there,” Flores said.

Flores earned her communications degree from Northwestern and later got her real estate broker’s license. But nightlife and the entertainment business have always intrigued her, so when a friend offered her the chance to invest in an existing night club, she jumped into the hospitality business.

Valerie Sanchez, a DePaul alumna, martial artist and founder of a self defense club for women, said women in her community have long sought female sports spaces.

“They’re forced to go to a sports bar where it’s only male sports playing because there’s not really these options, or maybe they don’t know where these resources are,” Sanchez said.

Playing collegiate basketball might be in the past, she said, but thinking like an athlete never will. A sports mindset still drives Flores’ biggest life decisions.

“I’m forever indebted to the game of basketball,” she said. “My whole life has been built on this game. All my success, every move I make, is purely based on the game of basketball.” 

Flores says basketball taught her how to be a good teammate and a leader. She also calls her staff members at the bar her “teammates.”

Jennifer King, an offensive analyst at North Carolina Central University, was the first Black woman to hold an assistant coaching position in the NFL. She is one of the investors in the project, and she also sees its diversity in ownership, and potential bar clientele, as its core mission.

“It was the representation I didn’t have in what I’m doing,” King said, “and I think to see women doing cool things in this space will motivate women to do other things in spaces, just because it’s kind of a can-do mentality.” 

Flores said she didn’t believe it would be possible to build a career in the women’s sports industry and instead focused on getting her degree from Northwestern. Now, she says times have changed, and Level Sporting Club serves as an example of that. 

“The ultimate goal is to prove and to show that women’s sports can anchor a business,” Flores said.