WOODARD, Lynette

(b. 12 August 1959 in Wichita, Kansas), pioneer in women's collegiate and professional basketball who set the record for the most career points in the history of women's collegiate basketball (3,649), and was the first woman to play for the Harlem Globetrotters.

Woodard grew up in Wichita, the third of four children of Lugene Woodard, a firefighter, and Dorothy Jenkins Woodard, a homemaker. At an early age she and her brother invented their own version of basketball called sockball, in which they practiced their basketball techniques by shooting a rolled-up pair of their father's socks over doorways. Their indoor games soon gave way to outdoor games on the public playground.

As a sophomore at Wichita North High School, Woodard played on the girls' basketball team. With her help the team won the 5A state championship in 1975 and 1977. Her playing also caught the eye of Marian Washington, the coach of the women's basketball team at the University of Kansas (KU). Her senior year Woodard was selected as a high-school All-American and was heavily recruited by college coaches. After graduating from high school in 1977, she decided to play for Coach Washington at KU.

In 1978, Woodard's first year at KU, she led the nation in rebounds with 14.8 and was second in scoring with 25.2 points per game. In her sophomore, junior, and senior years she led the nation in steals. During her four years at Kansas, the Lady Jayhawks won three Big Eight championships and had a four-year 108–32 win-loss record. Woodard was selected as the Big Eight Tournament Most Valuable Player (MVP) three times. She averaged 26.3 points per game and scored a record 3,649 points, an all-time scoring record for women's collegiate basketball. Her career record was especially spectacular because it was set in 1981, before the three-point rule. It is not listed as a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) record because it occurred one year before the NCAA took over the governance of women's college sports from the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW).

Woodard was a Kodak All-American all four years she played for Kansas (1978–1981). In her junior and senior years, she was also selected for Academic All-America honors. Her senior year she won both the Broderick Award and Wade Trophy as the women's college basketball player of the year. That same year she was selected as the Big Eight Conference Outstanding Female of the Year and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Wichita Chapter Woman of the Year. During her years at Kansas, playing forward and guard, she ranked first or second in the nation in steals, scoring, or rebounding. Woodard graduated from college in 1981 with a B.S. in speech communications and human relations. Her Lady Jayhawk retired jersey was hung next to those of Wilt Chamberlain and Danny Manning in the KU Allen Field House. In 1982, a year after graduating, the NCAA presented her with their Top V Award, naming her one of the top five collegiate athletes.

While at the University of Kansas, Woodard played on the U.S. national team that won a gold medal at the 1979 World University Games. She was selected for the 1980 U.S. Olympic women's basketball team, but due to the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics the team never competed. In 1983 Woodard was a member of the U.S. national teams that won a gold medal at the Pan-American Games and a silver medal at the World Championships. In 1984 she captained the U.S. Olympic team that won a gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics. Prior to the Los Angeles Olympics, the U.S. national team won a gold medal in international competition at the Jones Cup in Taipei, Taiwan, and Woodard was named to the All-Tournament team.

In 1985 Woodard made history when she became the first woman to play for the Harlem Globetrotters. Woodard had learned how to twirl a basketball years earlier from her cousin Hubert "Geese" Ausbie, a world-famous Harlem Globetrotter comedian whose twenty-four–year career ended in 1984. Woodard was presented with the Harlem Globetrotters prestigious "Legends" ring in 1996.

After playing with the Globetrotters for two years, Woodard played professionally in Italy for two seasons (1987–1989). In 1989 she helped her team win the Italian national championship. She then played three seasons (1990–1993) in Japan for Daiwa Securities. Her Japanese team won the divisional championship in 1992. While based overseas, she returned home to play for the U.S. national women's basketball teams that won a gold medal at the 1990 World Championships and a bronze medal at the 1991 Pan-American Games.

In 1992 Woodard became the athletic director for the Kansas City (Missouri) School District. She remained at this position for two years before moving to New York City to become a registered stockbroker with Magna Securities Corporation. But her playing days were not over, and in 1997 she was drafted to play for the Cleveland Rockers of the newly formed Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). In 1997 she led the Cleveland Rockers in steals with forty-six. Woodard was selected for the WNBA Detroit Shock expansion team coached by Nancy Lieberman-Cline in 1998. She retired after the 1998 season to return to her alma mater, the University of Kansas, where she became the athletic department's special assistant for external relations and women's basketball, and put her extensive experience to work in her position as the assistant coach of the Lady Jayhawks.

At six feet tall, Lynette Woodard is considered one of the most outstanding women basketball players of all time. She was a gifted complete player, who could play any position at the highest level. Her combined uncanny ability to anticipate and her exceptional quickness allowed her to dominate play. She received the Women's Sports Foundation Flo Hyman Award in 1993, and was inducted into the foundation's International Sports Hall of Fame. In 1996 she served as a member of the Olympic Committee Board of Directors, and was named the greatest female player in the history of the Big Eight Conference. Sports Illustrated for Women named her one of the one hundred greatest women athletes in 1999. The following year, Woodard became the first woman to be inducted into the Kansas City Sports Walk of Stars. Woodard will always be remembered as a trailblazer and one of the greatest players in women's basketball.

Useful sources include Kansas State Historical Society, "Biographies—Lynette Woodard" (1997), http://www.kshs.org/people/woodard.htm; Bert Rosenthal, Lynette Woodard: The First Female Globetrotter (1986); and Matthew Newman and Howard Schroeder, Lynette Woodard (1986). See also Gai I. Berlage, "Woodard, Lynette," in The Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Sports in the United States (2000), George Kirsch, Othello Harris, and Claire E. Nolte eds. See also the magazine pullout "100 Greatest Female Athletes, 81. Lynette Woodard, Basketball," Sports Illustrated for Women (winter 1999–2000).

Gai Ingham Berlage