Chamique Holdsclaw
basketball player
Personal Information
Born on August 9, 1977, daughter of Bonita, raised from age 11 in Queens, New York, by grandmother June Holdsclaw.
Education: Graduated from Christ the King High School, New York, New York; graduated from University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, 1999.
Career
Professional basketball player with Washington Mystics of WNBA league. Led Christ the King High to four consecutive state championships; led team to national championships for three of four years at Tennessee, 1996-98; became Tennessee's all-time leading scorer; drafted by Washington Mystics in first round, 1999; signed six-figure endorsement deal with Nike, 1999; named WNBA Rookie of the Year, 1999.
Life's Work
The pioneering women's professional basketball player Nancy Lieberman-Cline summed up her feelings with a single word when asked about Chamique Holdsclaw by the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service in 1997: "What I'm saying is, 'Yikes.'" On the strength of her four-year college basketball career at the University of Tennessee, sportswriters searched for superlatives to describe Holdsclaw's abilities; she was thought to be not just a great player, but someone who was fundamentally changing women's basketball. In 1999, her first year in the pros, she disappointed no expectations. Holdsclaw has often been compared to male basketball superstar Michael Jordan, who has expressed admiration for Holdsclaw's skills.
Chamique Holdsclaw (her first name is pronounced shuh-MEEK-wah, and she is known by the nickname "Meek") was born on August 9, 1977, and raised in New York City. Her family was never well off, and the financial strains became severe when her parents went their separate ways. When she was eleven, Chamique went to live with her grandmother, June, in a housing project in the Queens borough neighborhood of Astoria. In her grandmother's home she found a warm, stable environment; years later at the University of Tennessee, when she had to contribute to a listing of team members' parents, she entered her grandmother's name.
Joined Team as Freshman
The religious upbringing Holdsclaw received from her grandmother was strong; her lifelong jersey number of 23 refers not to any sports figure or tradition, but to the Bible's Twenty-Third Psalm ("The Lord is my shepherd ..."). But it still left her time to play basketball at a neighborhood court, where the local schoolboys set male pride aside and clamored for her to join their teams. She had the nickname "Flat Out" because she would flat out drop anything to play basketball. By the end of the eighth grade, approaching her mature height of six feet, two inches (with size 14 feet), Holdsclaw could throw a basketball the length of the court, and Vincent Canizzaro, coach of one of the nation's top girls' basketball programs at New York's Christ the King High School, put her in his team's varsity lineup during her freshman year.
Canizzaro's judgment proved sound when Holdsclaw led the Christ the King team to four consecutive state championships; the team lost only four games during her entire career there. "We've been blessed with a lot of great players," Canizzaro told Sports Illustrated, "but she has to be the best." In her last year, Holdsclaw averaged 25 points a game, and found herself the object of heavy recruitment from college programs. Her grandmother, a native Southerner, nudged her toward the University of Tennessee, partly out of admiration for Tennessee coach Pat Summitt.
Summitt, who became a second strong female presence in Holdsclaw's life over her four years at Tennessee, was as immediately bowled over by her new protegee as Canizzaro had been. Holdsclaw, who played the position of forward, was named Southeastern Conference Player of the Week in her very first week of play at Tennessee, as she averaged nearly 13 points a game over her first three games. 12 games into Holdsclaw's freshman season, Summitt praised her as potentially the best player ever to come to Tennessee, a perennial powerhouse in women's college basketball.
Led Team to Championship
Holdsclaw had a sensational freshman year, averaging 18.6 points a game and becoming the only woman ever named college Player of the Week by the ESPN cable-television sports network during one particularly torrid stretch. Summitt honed Holdsclaw's competitive instincts, taking Holdsclaw to task for her initial relaxed attitude in the face of the occasional loss, but eventually becoming the kind of strong yet nurturing guiding force Holdsclaw needed. At the season's end, Holdsclaw was named to a women's All-America squad sponsored by the Kodak corporation, the only freshman to be so honored. Injured in the finals of the Southeastern Conference tournament, she bounced back, and Tennessee romped to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship.
That year's worth of accomplishments by itself would have brought major prestige to any basketball player, but for Holdsclaw it was only the beginning. That NCAA championship would be the first of three that Tennessee would win during her college career. "The Tiger Woods of women's basketball is here," observed John Smallwood of the Knight-Ridder Tribune News Service, "and Holdsclaw may very well take the game to another level." Holdsclaw eventually became Tennessee's all-time leading scorer and rebounder, and in her senior year won the Sullivan award as the best amateur athlete in the United States.
Neither the biggest nor the most physically powerful woman in the game, Holdsclaw had uncanny mental strength, consistently summoning incredible energy in clutch situations. "Some people compete when it's convenient," Nancy Lieberman-Cline told Time magazine. "Chamique steps up when the team needs her." A typical performance came in January of 1999, when Holdsclaw scored 25 points to lead the Lady Volunteers to an away-game victory over arch-rival Connecticut, dealing that team its first loss at home in 54 games.
Signed Nike Deal
As Holdsclaw neared the end of her time at Tennessee, speculation about her future ran hot and heavy in the nation's sports press. With her camera-friendly looks and a disarming manner often described as humble, Holdsclaw has been expected to reap huge financial rewards not just from her work on the basketball court, but also through endorsement deals and the like. She had already been approached about a movie deal; filmmaker Spike Lee had wanted to cast Holdsclaw in his college basketball story He Got Game (whose title, with gender altered, provided the headline for many a Holdsclaw newspaper story). NCAA rules did not allow that, but once her final season was over, the marketing of Chamique Holdsclaw began. She agreed to a five-year contract with Nike, Inc., that was easily the largest ever signed by a female athlete; it promised to bring her an annual income in six figures before she even picked up a basketball. She also announced plans to join the Nickelodeon television network as an on-air sports personality.
Holdsclaw was the only college player selected in the first round of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) draft. Though she had expressed a desire to return home to New York, she was drafted by the Washington Mystics. Her first-year performance was as remarkable as ever: she averaged 16.9 points per game (good for a ranking of sixth in the league), started 31 of 32 games, and was named the WNBA's Rookie of the Year. Whether Holdsclaw could become the female Michael Jordan remained to be seen, but she was well on her way.
Awards
Numerous awards include selection for Associated Press All-America team, 1996-97, 1997-98, and 1998-99; named four consecutive years to Kodak All-American team; won Sullivan Award as nation's best amateur athlete, 1999.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Jet, September 20, 1999, p. 48: May 24, 1999, p. 46.
- Interactive Sports Wire, May 14, 1999.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News, May 14, 1999.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, March 31, 1997.
- Newsweek, March 15, 1999, p. 63.
- Sporting News, April 7, 1997, p. 17.
- Sports Illustrated, December 2, 1996, p. 100.
- Time, March 22, 1999, p. 95.
— James M. Manheim
Either I would find an open shot or help create one for someone else.
