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Driven to prove herself against her OLDER brothers and other boys, Sheryl Swoopes became queen of the courtby Gerry Callahan
The words have been setting fires inside her since she was seven. Her older brothers, James and Earl, would be in the yard, shooting baskets, playing one-on-one, knocking each other around, and she would wander onto the court. What are you doing here, Sheryl? You can't play with guys.
In high school she would hang around the gym during the boys' pickup games, hoping they would come up one player short. Who else can we get? The girl, someone would say. What about the girl? She would join the game, but the boys would play as if she weren't on the floor. "The only time I got to shoot was if I got the rebound and dribbled the length of the court myself," she says. "It's always been that way. It didn't matter how good I was. It was always, 'You're a girl. You can't play with the guys.' It's always been motivation for me."
Rugged backyard games with Earl (left) and James made Sheryl a tougher player.
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"Some people say a women's league won't work because the NBA is so popular and we don't need any more pro basketball," says Swoopes. "But I think the NBA's popularity just shows that there's a lot of interest in the sport. I think there are enough fans out there to support professional leagues for both men and women."
Swoopes may soon get her wish. She is part of the first standing U.S. women's national basketball team, assembled in the spring of 1995 to train and tour together in preparation for the Atlanta Olympics. An eight-team women's pro league, known as the American Basketball League, is supposed to begin play next fall, and an NBA-sponsored women's pro league is scheduled to launch next summer. No one has to tell Swoopes and her teammates what's on the line in Atlanta. A gold medal could boost the new leagues' chances of success. A poor showing by the U.S. team and, well, American women can go back to playing in Hungary.
"Obviously our Number 1 goal is to win the gold medal," says Swoopes, who along with her teammates will begin play on Sunday against Cuba, "but we're also hoping to show people what women's basketball is like on a pro level. We want to make this work. I know one thing: I don't want to go back to Europe."
As a kid in Brownfield, Texas, Swoopes would read in her schoolbooks about distant lands. She would wonder, What's the point of learning about other places when you're happy where you are? Her father left the family before she was born, and her mother, Louise, often worked three jobs to support Sheryl and her two brothers, but as far as Sheryl can recall, she had everything she needed in Brownfield, a farming town of 10,387, about 40 miles from Lubbock.
"I didn't have all the pressures of alcohol and drugs when I was growing up," she says. "We were practically raised in church. The hardest thing for me was when my friends would call and ask if I wanted to go shopping at the mall. I could go, but I could just look. I didn't have the money to buy anything."
Sheryl's introduction to basketball was right out of a movie. Her brothers knocked the spokes out of an old bicycle wheel and attached it to a post next to the house. They told Sheryl that maybe she could play. "Oh, we'd let her sometimes," says James, now 29 and a software engineer in Dallas. "But our games were always pretty rough, and she'd go running to our mother and crying about how we were picking on her. We were just trying to toughen her up."
"Air Swoopes" warmed up for Atlanta by averaging 12 points per game in exhibition play.
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As a senior Swoopes was named female high school player of the year in Texas. Soon after graduating she began dating Eric Jackson, whom she married last June. Given her pick of colleges—most recruiters felt she could turn any Division I school into a national title contender—Swoopes chose to go to the University of Texas. It was about 400 miles from Brownfield, but she figured it had a big-time program and at least was in her home state. She lasted four days. "I knew she didn't like her decision even before she left," says Louise. "I think she started on a Monday, and every day she called and said, 'Mom, I want to come home.' I just said, 'You know the door's always open.' On Friday she was home."
Swoopes called the coach at South Plains College, a junior college in Levelland, about 25 miles from Brownfield, and asked if she could play for his team. He thought she was joking. She wasn't. She enrolled right away and in her second year was named female junior college player of the year. She then transferred to Texas Tech, in nearby Lubbock.
Because of her physical abilities, Swoopes has been compared to Michael Jordan, but her story is more similar to that of Larry Bird, another stubborn, small-town superstar. Bird left Indiana University a few days after arriving and eventually carried Indiana State, a smaller, less intimidating school, to national prominence. One difference: Swoopes took her school to the pinnacle, an 84-82 Texas Tech triumph over Ohio State in the 1993 NCAA women's final, while Bird's Sycamores lost the '79 men's national championship game, to Magic Johnson and Michigan State.
Two things have made Swoopes one of the most famous names in women's basketball. One was her performance in that 1993 title game, in which she scored 47 points—a record for an NCAA championship game, men's or women's. "It amazes me how many people still talk to me about that game," she says. "I mean, it was only a women's basketball game, but everywhere we go, someone mentions it."
The second thing that caught the public's fancy, of course, has been Swoopes's name. It is as smooth as the player who owns it. Headline writers and P.A. announcers love it, and so does Nike, which introduced its Air Swoopes line of basketball shoes early last year. Nike vice president of marketing Liz Dolan has said that one reason Swoopes was chosen for the line was "because she has a cool name." That she was the first person, after Jordan, to have a Nike shoe bearing her name is an honor that means as much to Swoopes as the six-figure income the endorsement earns for her. "That's the greatest compliment I've ever received because Michael has always been my idol," she says. "But the most important thing is that my Nike deal has done so much for women's basketball. Now every player on the national team has a shoe contract. Can you imagine that having happened five years ago? It wouldn't have."
Rebecca Lobo, who led Connecticut to an undefeated season and the NCAA title in 1994-95, has done her share to promote women's basketball, but she insists Swoopes made it possible. "She's where it all started," Lobo says. "She's the first one to have a real recognizable name in women's basketball."
Swoopes has yet to meet the man who gave her that surname. Louise says she was pregnant with her only daughter when her husband, Billy Swoopes, walked out. Sheryl, a devout Christian, says her mother didn't raise her to hold grudges, and she wouldn't turn her back on her father if he suddenly popped into her life. "I don't hold on to the past or pass judgment on people," she says. "I'm sure he's read about me or seen me on TV. I'd like to see him. I hope I will. He's still my father."
Maybe because her family always got by on a modest income, Swoopes knows that money isn't what matters most in life. "I have to be happy," she says. "And no amount of money is going to buy my happiness." Many of the women on the U.S. team gave up lucrative gigs overseas to play in Atlanta. Not Swoopes, who had bailed out of the Italian women's pro league and returned to playing pickup games in Lubbock long before her Olympic invitation arrived.
Swoopes led Tech to the NCAA title in '93, scoring 47 points in the final against Ohio State.
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Moreover, collecting Swoopes's $60,000 salary from the Basket Bari team proved to be difficult; she ended up receiving less than $15,000 of it. "The owner of the team would tell us to meet him at the bank on Thursday so he could pay her," says Jackson. "Then he wouldn't show up, and he'd blame it on the language barrier. He'd say, 'Oh, you misunderstood. I meant a week from Thursday.'" Says Sheryl, "If I'm going to play basketball and not get paid, I'm going to do it in some gym in Texas."
Like all national team members, Swoopes was paid $50,000 by USA Basketball, the sport's domestic governing body, to spend the past year training for Atlanta. During a grueling 71Ž2-month worldwide barnstorming tour that ended on June 15, the women played 51 games against college and national teams and never lost. Swoopes averaged 12 points and about 20 minutes per game.
Almost everywhere they went in the U.S., team members signed autographs, made appearances at schools and hospitals and generally tried to generate goodwill. "We wanted to go out and show people what kind of game we play and also what kind of people we are off the court," says Swoopes. "If a woman basketball player had made a public appearance when I was kid, I know I would have remembered it my entire life."
During the team's stop at Vanderbilt, Swoopes met a wheelchair-bound man named Roger who said he was a huge fan of women's basketball. He said he had forgiven her for Texas Tech's having beaten his beloved Vandy team in 1993, and he asked her for a pair of Air Swoopes. She thought this was an unusual request, since Roger had no arms or legs, but before a game the next night she gave him the sneakers. "The man was so happy, I just broke down in tears," she says. "I couldn't believe it. All I did was give him a pair of shoes—and he can't even wear them. When a man like that can find happiness inside him, how can we complain about anything?"
Inside Swoopes there will always be a delicate balance between contentment and competitiveness. She knows that she is blessed with family and friends and sublime athletic talent, but she also knows that there is more to accomplish—more games to win, more to prove. She still doesn't have an Olympic medal or a place to play professionally in her home country. The inner fires burn. "The thing with Sheryl is that if you say she can't do it," says her husband, "that's all she needs to hear."
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