ROSEMONT, Ill. -- Candace Parker is finally in the WNBA Finals.Her first trip to the championship caps off an eventful, and at times difficult, year for the Los Angeles Sparks star.She was left off the Olympic team despite being a two-time gold medalist and mourned the passing of her college coach, Tennessees Pat Summitt. Now she has a chance to win her first WNBA title, the only thing missing from her incredible basketball resume.Parker scored 29 points and the Los Angeles Sparks beat the Chicago Sky 95-75 on Tuesday night to advance to the WNBA Finals.Its been a long journey. We havent done anything yet. We havent accomplished our goal, Parker said.Parker shot 6 of 10 from the field and made 14 of her 15 free throws to lead the Sparks to the finals for the first time since 2003 after they won championships in 2001 and 2002.Its been an emotional year for her, Sparks coach Brian Agler said. She had a great year, a great playoff. We all know Candace is one of the best in the world. We like it when the ball is in her hands.Parker missed the finals her rookie year in 2008 when the Sparks lost in the Western Conference finals.Youre young. You think, `Oh, well be back next year, Parker said. That didnt happen, then the next and the next. You look up and its eight years. I really appreciate this.Kristi Toliver added 21 points and league MVP Nneka Ogwumike had 17 points and nine rebounds for the second-seeded Sparks, who won the semifinal series 3-1.They will face the defending champion Minnesota Lynx in a best-of-5 series for the league title. The top-seeded Lynx swept Phoenix in the other semifinal and will be going for their fourth title in six years.Cappie Pondexter scored 19 points and rookie Imani Boyette had 15 to lead the fourth-seeded Sky. Clarissa Dos Santos had 14 points and Jessica Breland added 12. Chicago played without 2015 MVP and leading scorer Elena Delle Donne, who has a thumb injury.The Sparks won the first two games of the series by an average of 17.5 points before the Sky took Game 3 70-66 on Sunday.For the most part we played with a lot more composure tonight, Agler said.After shooting 6-of-33 from beyond the arc in Game 3 against the Skys zone, the Sparks made 9 of their 13 3-pointers Tuesday. Toliver hit all four of her 3s.We just countered (the zone) with movement, Ogwumike said. A lot of times you can get stuck literally without moving the ball and bodies in the zone. We did a great job of moving the ball and recognizing gaps.The Sparks shot 55 percent from the field and made 28 of their 30 free throws.The Sky got within eight early in the fourth quarter before Parker scored the next eight points on a 3-pointer and five free throws to put the game away.I give her all the credit. She did what she had to do for her team to advance, Pondexter said.TIP-INS:The Sparks won six of their seven games against Chicago this season and scored at least 93 points in five of those victories. . Los Angeles dropped two of three to Minnesota during the regular season. ... Toliver has made at least one 3 in every game she has played.STILL SIDELINEDDelle Donne missed her 10th consecutive game after undergoing thumb surgery on Sept. 13.Im extremely proud of them, but Im not surprised, Sky coach Pokey Chatman said of how her team played without Delle Donne. We sped up the pace a little bit.UP NEXTGame 1 of the WNBA Finals is Sunday in Minneapolis Cheap Vapormax China .C. at the helm of the top team in the Eastern Conference. His tenure as the GM in Vancouver was all too brief. Though he led the Canucks to what was then a franchise record-shattering campaign in just his second season, Nonis was gone and replaced one year later. Nike Vapormax Wholesale China . -- Catcher Brett Hayes has agreed to a $630,000, one-year contract with the Kansas City Royals, avoiding salary arbitration. http://www.cheapvapormaxwholesale.com/ . -- The St. Johns IceCaps weathered a wild first period with the help of goaltender Jussi Olkinuora, before finding offensive inroads in the second. Cheap Vapormax For Sale .ca. Kerry, Just watched the shootout in the Coyotes/Leafs game and I have to ask, why was the James van Riemsdyk goal allowed to count? All of the video replays we were shown on TV were inconclusive about whether the puck had entirely crossed the line or not. Vapormax Cheap Online . The 27-year-old Scrivens will be joining his third NHL club since signing with the Toronto Maple Leafs as a free agent in 2010. The move also reunites with him with head coach Dallas Eakins from their time together with the American Hockey Leagues Toronto Marlies. May the best woman win.Tattoo artist Ryan Ashley said those words to fellow tattooer Kelly Doty after both women were named to the live, three-finalist Ink Master finale.Ink Master is a competition show on Spike that pits tattoo artists against one another in different challenges involving human canvasses (in other words, people who sign an exhausting amount of paperwork in order to get tattooed on television.) The artists are whittled down week by week, until only the final three remain. This season, the artists were split draft-style into two teams: Team Peck and Team Nu?ez -- named for Chris Nu?ez and Oliver Peck, the shows judges and famed tattooers.Basically, Ink Master is the ring where tattooers come to box.For seven seasons of the reality show, no woman had ever won the title of Ink Master. Only one other woman -- Sarah Miller in Season 2 -- even made it to the finale, making Ashleys win in Season 8 all the more sweet. Heres the winning tattoo she inked (which, by the way, she completed in 24 hours):Ashley grew up in a trailer park in Dallas, Pennsylvania, a small town about 20 miles west of Scranton. She was raised by a single mom who juggled a job at McDonalds with night school, where she eventually earned her degree in accounting.We were really poor for a really long time, Ashley said. We never had cable or the internet. My mom is an artist, and when we were bored she would ask us to draw her things. If I couldnt do it, shed show me how.Always a talented artist, Ashley moved to New York City after high school to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She landed at a private-label company, but after nearly five years, she decided she needed to get out of her cube and away from her screen. She found her way into tattooing.Tattoo artists arent made overnight. They do apprenticeships at shops and with other artists. Ashley worked with Nick Malasto at his private studio focusing on custom tattoos, not dissimilar from the ones on Ink Master. She now owns her own private studio nestled within the collectibles shop she co-owns in Kingston, Pennsylvania: The Strange and Unusual Oddities Parlor.Street shopss, where people typically walk in to get ink, arent really her style, she says.ddddddddddddI had to do a tri-color Rastafarian ankle band on half-off day, Ashley said. It was the worst day of my life, and since that specific tattoo I decided I could never work in a street shop again.Though the finale began with three artists -- Ashley, Doty and Gian Karle -- by the end it was only Ashley and Karle standing. Ashley was awarded the title in a 2-1 split decision by the judges with host Dave Navarro making the final call.One of the more staggering parts of her victory is that Ashley has just entered only her fifth year of tattooing. Her win marks the second consecutive year that a relatively new artist has triumphed over the field, following in the shoes of Season 7 winner, Anthony Michaels.Older tattooers only want to do what they want to do, judge Peck said in a phone interview. Young tattooers are eager. They feel like they have a great opportunity to do something and are willing to jump through any hoops that come their way.Ink Master is hard. The contestants often tattoo for extended periods of time and compete in challenges that require both physical and mental stamina. Tattooing for long amounts of time -- while not classically athletic -- is still physically demanding. The artists hunch over, gripping vibrating machines, while creating permanent art on another person in whatever conditions theyre given.Ashley says she was able to thrive in the competition because of the support given by the other women in the house: Doty, Nikki Simpson and Gia Rose. The four of them formed an alliance that crossed Team Peck and Team Nu?ez and landed two of them in the finale.?We want the best artist to win, Ashley said before the finale. We dont want the easy road, we dont want anything to be handed to us just because were girls. All of us, collectively, had the same hope that it would finally be a girl this season.This season, the best woman did win. She was also just the best. No qualifier needed. ' ' '