WBB: Lynette Woodard is grateful for her 1984 Olympic expertise

Lynette Woodard is one among girls’s basketball’s best pioneers: a five-tool participant who might do all of it whereas dazzling followers together with her infectious enthusiasm and magnetic smile.

All through her profession, she has been a “first” each as a person and as a part of a workforce. On the College of Kansas, she is first in seven statistical classes, together with scoring, rebounding and steals. She was the primary lady to play for the Harlem Globetrotters.

These are particular person firsts. 40 years in the past, Woodard was a part of a historic group first.

On the 1984 Olympic Video games in Los Angeles, she was a member of the primary US Girls’s Nationwide Basketball Workforce to deliver house a gold medal. Amongst her teammates had been Cheryl Miller, Pam McGee, Teresa Edwards and Kim Mulkey. The Individuals went undefeated and dominated their opponents by double figures in each sport, together with a 92-61 victory over Canada within the gold medal sport. All of the video games had been performed on the Nice Western Discussion board in Los Angeles. Woodard feels “eternally grateful” for the expertise, largely for the work it took to get there.

Picture by Heinz Kluetmeier /Disney Common Leisure Content material by way of Getty Photos

It had been a protracted 4 years after america boycotted the 1980 Olympic Video games in Moscow over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Because of this, the Olympic dream of American athletes who put in years of sacrifice, together with Woodard, had been derailed. As she informed Swish Attraction in an interview:

We labored simply as onerous to be there, however simply in a single day we weren’t in a position to attend. So to have the ability to climate the storm, if you’ll, for 4 years, proceed to coach, doing all of the issues that had been essential to make that workforce, I used to be so joyful and eternally grateful to be part of it.

It was additionally a protracted eight years after the US Girls’s Nationwide Workforce got here away with the silver medal on the 1976 Montreal Video games, the first-ever Olympics to function girls’s basketball. Woodard “beams with pleasure” when fascinated about taking part in alongside her fellow future legends on the 1984 workforce and the way they might assist to develop the sport. She shared:

Everybody on that workforce had sport and we revered one another’s sport. It was a implausible time. Cheryl, who was in all probability the primary faculty participant at the moment and had that West Coast vibe. To look at Kim Mulkey through the years, the McGee twins, they had been just a few heavy hitters who introduced quite a bit to the sport and actually helped to construct that basis that sealed that chance for us to get that gold medal.

To win the first-ever gold medal for america in girls’s basketball was one factor, however to win it at house was icing on the cake. Woodard defined:

It meant every little thing. We needed to undergo that boycott so we all know that it didn’t need to be. You waited anxiously up till it was sport time to have the ability to say, ‘Sure we did it, we’re right here, there’s no turning again.’ It actually held our focus and we simply took one sport at a time and that’s all you could possibly actually do. It pressured us to not look too far down the street, keep proper within the pocket the place we would have liked to be, in order that we are able to come out of there victorious.

Picture credit score ought to learn HEINE PEDERSEN/AFP/GettyImages

The 1984 Olympics had been outlined largely by the exploits of the American athletes in entrance of a rabid partisan crowd. Mary Lou Retton gained hearts together with her good 10 efficiency in gymnastics. Carl Lewis cemented his standing because the “world’s quickest man” with 4 gold medals. Edwin Moses glided his strategy to greatness within the 400-meter hurdles. The US boxing workforce, led by Evander Holyfield, grew to become one of the crucial embellished. Florence Griffith Joyner made her debut. The US males’s basketball workforce steamrolled their strategy to a gold medal, led by the likes of Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing and Sam Perkins.

Woodard mentioned being across the Olympic Village with many of those eventual superstars was unforgettable. As she describes it:

The issues we obtained to take pleasure in was the Olympic Village. With the ability to stroll round, eat the best meals, it was actually superior, meet lots of people in the neighborhood. It was a vibe that was second to none and other people look ahead to it each Olympic Video games. You need to hear about that village, you need to go to that village, you need to see that village simply so you may actually really feel part of what the Olympic Video games is all about. A number of people we obtained to rub shoulders with earlier than they grew to become these megastars, it was actually cool.

The 1984 workforce is in some ways the hyperlink between the 1976 workforce and the current day. They had been the start of what has turn into one of many best dynasties in all of sports activities. The ladies of Workforce USA are poised to win their ninth gold medal in Paris, in addition to their eighth-consecutive courting again to the historic 1996 workforce that captured gold on the Atlanta Video games.

Woodard desires the 1984 workforce to be remembered as those “who set the muse,” whereas additionally crediting those that got here earlier than and expressing pleasure in what the workforce has turn into. She mentioned:

We introduced the gold house. We are able to actually say that we helped begin that and, to not negate anybody, the 1976 workforce they did an ideal job too, they introduced us to the silver, however we went forward and kicked that door down. We’ve been victors ever since and we need to preserve that.