Lynette Woodard

Considered one of basketball’s greatest female players, Lynette Woodard excelled in the sport during her professional career in the 1980s and 1990s. A two-time Olympic Game basketball player, Woodard served as co-captain of the United States’ gold medal team in 1984. She became the first female member of the famed Harlem Globetrotters in 1985, and was named Big Eight Player of the Decade for the 1980s. In 1996 Woodard was named best female player in Big Eight Conference history, having set career records for scoring and rebounding. After a four-year retirement in the mid-1990s, Woodard returned to join the new Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), playing for the Cleveland Rockers and the Detroit Shock. A worldwide basketball star, Woodard is known equally well in her native United States as in Italy and Japan, where she has also played professionally.