Black History Month Profile: Sheryl Swoopes - The WNBA's first legend
First woman to ever be signed to the WNBA. First woman to have a signature shoe with Nike. Olympian, WNBA MVP, and WNBA champion. What hasn't Sheryl Swoopes done?
Women's professional basketball is still a relatively new thing in the United States. For someone like Sheryl Swoopes, the role models and heroines she looked up to on the basketball court usually made their legends in the college ranks, before falling into obscurity after the conclusion of their amateur tenures or going off to play in Europe until the Olympics every four years. Despite the question mark surrounding the chance to make a name for herself in the sport that she loved, Sheryl Swoopes always knew that basketball was her passion. At just seven years old, she played little league basketball in her native Brownfield, TX. In high school, she played for the Brownfield Cubs, where she grew to a full six feet tall. As a senior, Swoopes led the Cubs with 26.7 and 13 rebounds per game en route to a Class 3A All-State selection and a second-team Parade All-American nod.
After high school, Swoopes played two years at South Plains Community College (Levelland, TX) where her 1,381 total points in just two years set the career scoring mark between the years 1975-1991, where the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) only had one division for women's basketball. Her prolific offensive prowess did not stop in Levelland, because after two years she transferred to Texas Tech. The school's website hails her as the “most decorated athlete in Texas Tech history.” The praise is justified; in her senior season alone Swoopes scored 28.1 points per game while leading the Lady Raiders to Southwest Conference regular season and tournament championships, respectively, and the NCAA Championship in 1993. Sheryl Swoopes' name is on 30 total NCAA women's basketball records as a Lady Raider, as well as the school's single game points record, 53. In 1994, Texas Tech retired Sheryl Swoopes' No. 22 jersey, and she was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2003.
In 1995, while playing for Basket Bari, an Italian club team, Swoopes made history by becoming the first woman to have a signature athletic shoe with Nike. The shoe, called the Air Swoopes, helped pave the way for more female athletes to receive shoe deals like Nike's Dawn Staley and A'ja Wilson, as well as Adidas' Candace Parker. According to kickstory, a shoe and style based website, the original Air Swoopes were designed to be lighter and less bulky than men's shoes at the time, fit for Sheryl's game. The shoes also used Nike's latest and greatest technology to offer unparalleled ankle support. There were seven total iterations of the Air Swoopes line, with the last being the Nike Air Tuned Swoopes, released in 1999.
When the WNBA held their first draft in April 1997, Swoopes was allocated to the Houston Comets due to her Texas origins. She was also the very first player in the league's history to sign a contract with a team. Her second seaosn as a pro is where the magic really happened. It was then that Swoopes started a streak of four seasons as a first-team WNBA selection in seasons where she played more than 10 games, only missing the 2001 season with a torn ACL. In 2002, her first year back, Swoopes picked up without missing a beat, winning both league MVP and Defensive Player of the Year, scoring 18.5 points and snaring 2.8 steals per game. At the 2011 WNBA All-Star Game, the year she retired, she was recognized as one of the WNBA's 15 greatest players at the time.
Internationally, Swoopes starred on the US Women's National Team, winning gold at the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympics, respectively. She is one of 11 players to win an Olympic gold medal, FIBA World Cup gold medal, WNBA, and an NCAA championship. In 2016, she was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
In her post-playing career, Sheryl Swoopes served as an assistant coach at Mercer Island High School (WA) in 2010, a Texas Tech WBB color analyst (2012-13 and 2017-18 seasons), and varying assistant roles on both the Loyola University Chicago and Texas Tech women's teams.
In the basketball space, Sheryl Swoopes was a trailblazer. Not only was she a dynamic force for decades on the court, but she paved the path and gave the blueprint for all women that came after her. It is only right that we honor her as the WNBA's first legend.
