Sheryl Swoopes biography
Sheryl Swoopes, in full Sheryl Denise Swoopes, (born March 25, 1971, Brownfield, Texas, U.S.), American basketball participant who received three Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards (2000, 2002, and 2005) and 4 WNBA titles (1997–2000) as a member of the Houston Comets.
After being named the 1991 nationwide Junior College Player of the Year, Swoopes transferred to Texas Tech University. There she received the National Player of the Year award in her senior season as she led the Lady Raiders to the 1993 National Collegiate Athletic Association nationwide championship (the place Swoopes set a file for many factors scored within the title recreation, with 47).
She joined the Comets earlier than the WNBA’s inaugural marketing campaign in 1997, and she or he helped the workforce win that season’s WNBA title. Swoopes and the Comets reeled off three extra championships within the subsequent three years, the final of which (in 2000) got here after a daily season through which she scored a career-high 20.7 factors per recreation and received the league’s MVP and Defensive Player of the Year awards. Swoopes received each the MVP and Defensive Player of the Year awards once more in 2002. She repeated as Defensive Player of the Year in 2003 after main the league in steals per recreation, and in 2005 she grew to become the league’s first three-time MVP.
In 2005 Swoopes made nationwide information when she revealed that she was homosexual, turning into essentially the most distinguished athlete in a North American workforce sport to take action. (However, in 2011, she introduced her engagement to a person; the couple married in 2017.) A again damage restricted her to appearances in simply three video games in 2007, and in 2008 she joined the Seattle Storm however was launched on the finish of the season. Swoopes performed with the Greek workforce Esperides in 2010 and joined the WNBA’s Tulsa Shock in 2011. She didn't return to skilled basketball in 2012. In 2017 Swoopes returned to Texas Tech University, serving as director of participant improvement for the ladies’s basketball workforce earlier than being named an assistant coach.
Swoopes was a five-time All-WNBA first-team choice, and she or he received three Olympic gold medals as a member of the U.S. girls’s basketball workforce (1996, 2000, and 2004). She was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016.