By Tamara Shiloh

In April 1996, women’s basketball announced: “We Got Next.”

The WNBA was approved by the NBA Board of Governors, and games would begin the following year. The inaugural season proved successful as more than 50 million viewers watched the games.

Six months after the announcement, the league signed its first player, Sheryl Denise Swoopes (b. 1971–). In 1997, she was recruited for the Houston Comets. The signing of the contract had been long anticipated, far from the days when a girl turning pro seemed an impossible dream.

Raised by her mother in Brownsville, Texas, young Sheryl played basketball with her three older brothers. By age seven, she was competing in a local kid’s league, the Little Dribblers. It was her siblings, she said, that helped her hone her game.

“At first, they didn’t like playing with me,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “Then when they did, they wouldn’t play hard. But eventually one brother, James, played ball at Murray State. He’s 6-4. He wouldn’t play hard until he saw how good I was getting, when I beat him a couple of times.”

Over time, competing with her brothers increased her confidence, making her eager to test her skills on the blacktop. Swoopes made the basketball team at Brownfield High School, where she developed into an All-State and All-American high school player.

“It helps to play with the guys,” she told the Washington Post. “They’re so much more physical than girls are. Once you go out and you play with guys, and you get in a situation with girls, you think, ‘Well, if I scored on that guy, I know I can score on her.’”

Six feet tall by high school graduation, Swoops stood among the most popular college recruits. Her choice: University of Texas at Austin. It was the only school she seriously considered, yet she’d never given the 400-mile distance much thought.

“It was a big national basketball power, and I thought they could take my game to another level. But once I got there … well, I just didn’t realize how far it was from home,” she said. Homesick, after four days she returned home, relinquishing her full scholarship.

Determined to take her game to another level, Swoops ignored the naysayers predicting her career was already over. She enrolled in South Plains Junior College in Levelland, Texas. There, after her second season, she was named National Junior College Player of the Year. Basketball, going forward, was an uphill climb.

In 1993, Swoopes won the NCAA women’s basketball championship with the Texas Tech Lady Raiders. She has won three Olympic gold medals, an NCAA Championship, and a WNBA title. She was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016. In 2017, she was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

Share Swoopes’ story about the game with your young daughter. Read “Shattering the Glass: The Remarkable History of Women’s Basketball,” by Pamela Grundy and Susan Shackelford.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post