Sheryl Swoopes

Basketball Player

In 1993 Sheryl Swoopes, playing for Texas Tech University, scored a record 47 points in a national championship game. After college, Swoopes competed internationally, and in 1996 she won an Olympic gold medal as part of the U.S. team (she also won gold medals in 2000 and 2004). She was among the first women drafted in 1997 to play professional basketball for the WNBA, signing with the Houston Comets. She helped lead the Comets to a "fourpeat" of consecutive championships in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 and has consistently been one of their best players. Swoopes was also voted the league's Most Valuable Player in 2000, 2002 and 2005.

Extra credit: Swoopes was the first player in the WNBA to get a triple double... Swoopes has a son from a marriage that ended in 1999; in 2005 she announced that she was gay, explaining further that she was not "born gay" and that it had nothing to do with her divorce.

Swoopes also appears in our loop on women athletes, Big Girls On The Ball.