WBB: Lynette Woodard is grateful for her 1984 Olympic expertise

Lynette Woodard is one in all ladies’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 girl 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 Ladies’s Nationwide Basketball Crew to carry 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 Basic Leisure Content material through Getty Pictures

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

We labored simply as exhausting to be there, however simply in a single day we weren’t capable of 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 completely happy and eternally grateful to be part of it.

It was additionally a protracted eight years after the US Ladies’s Nationwide Crew got here away with the silver medal on the 1976 Montreal Video games, the first-ever Olympics to function ladies’s basketball. Woodard “beams with satisfaction” when occupied with taking part in alongside her fellow future legends on the 1984 workforce and the way they’d 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 most likely the primary faculty participant at the moment and had that West Coast vibe. To look at Kim Mulkey over time, the McGee twins, they had been just a few heavy hitters who introduced lots 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 the USA in ladies’s basketball was one factor, however to win it at house was icing on the cake. Woodard defined:

It meant all the pieces. 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 possibly can actually do. It compelled 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 will 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 technique to greatness within the 400-meter hurdles. The US boxing workforce, led by Evander Holyfield, grew to become one of the vital adorned. Florence Griffith Joyner made her debut. The US males’s basketball workforce steamrolled their technique to a gold medal, led by the likes of Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing and Sam Perkins.

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

The issues we obtained to get pleasure from was the Olympic Village. Having the ability to stroll round, eat the best meals, it was actually superior, meet lots of people locally. It was a vibe that was second to none and folks stay up for it each Olympic Video games. You wish to hear about that village, you wish to go to that village, you wish to see that village simply so you possibly can actually really feel part of what the Olympic Video games is all about. Loads 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 Crew 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 inspiration,” whereas additionally crediting those that got here earlier than and expressing satisfaction in what the workforce has turn into. She stated:

We introduced the gold house. We will actually say that we helped begin that and, to not negate anybody, the 1976 workforce they did an excellent 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 wish to preserve that.