Sheryl Swoopes

Sheryl Denise Swoopes is an American former professional basketball player.

Born on March 25th, 1971 in Brownfield, Texas, Swoopes first began playing basketball at age seven for a local children’s league called Little Dribblers. Her professional career began in college as a shooting guard/small forward when she began playing for South Plains and later Texas Tech, and becoming the most highly touted women’s basketball prospect in the US.

In 1996, Swoopes became the first player to join the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), where she played for 12 seasons, 10 with the Houston Comets (1997–2007), one with the Seattle Storm (2008), and one with the Tulsa Shock (2011). With her elite speed and precision, her positional IQ, and her ability to run up the scoreboard, Swoopes was dominant for much of her career, winning league MVP three times.

She also competed in the USA Basketball Women's National team at the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Olympic games, winning gold all three times. She is one of only 11 female basketball players to have won a NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) Championship, a Fiba world cup gold, an Olympic gold medal, and a WNBA title. She was the first female athlete to have her own Nike shoe,^[1] and in 2017, was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. After her retirement as a player, Swoopes began coaching.

Swoopes married an old high school sweetheart in 1995, a man with whom she had her son, Jordan, but the couple divorced in 1999. She made headlines around the world in 2005 when she publicly came out as gay — one of the first major sports players to do so — and began a relationship with former basketballer and Houston Comets coach Alisa Scott. They were together for seven years, and split up in 2011. Swoopes has since remarried to Chris Unclesho. Her second marriage caused another uproar, for which she was criticized and mocked in the media for “turning straight” again after identifying as lesbian for many years and advocating for LGBT rights in sports. Swoopes defended herself, saying that she no longer saw her sexuality as black and white, and that she knew she could be attracted to men and women both.^[2]

In a 2020 interview with FOX Soul, Swoopes discussed the image of the WNBA and the responsibility the organization has to do better by its LGBT players. On discussing her coming out publicly, she said:

I did what I did for me [...] I got to a point where I was just tired of not being able to be me, and to live. You can’t worry about other people accepting you for you, if you haven’t accepted yourself.