basketball player
Personal Information
Born July 19, 1964, in Cairo, GA; daughter of Mildred Edwards and Leroy Copeland.
Education: University of Georgia, B.S., 1989.
Career
Basketball player. Member of Southeastern Conference championship teams with University of Georgia, 1983, 1984, and 1986; member of United States women's Olympic basketball team, 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996, won gold medals in 1984, 1988, and 1996, won bronze medal in 1992. Member of gold medal-winning World Championship team, 1990; member of bronze medal-winning World Championship team, 1994. Professional basketball player in Italy, Spain, and Japan, 1986-95; professional player with Atlanta Glory in American Basketball League (ABL), 1996--.
Life's Work
Teresa Edwards's sporting career stands as proof that women can be as successful in the basketball arena as men. She holds the record for Olympic basketball appearances with four, and her professional career is now entering its second decade. The dynamic Edwards, a former All-American from the University of Georgia and longtime international basketball star, won an unprecedented third gold medal in 1996 as a member of the U.S. women's Olympic basketball team. That honor capped a distinguished career as an Olympian, featuring gold medals for basketball in 1984 and 1988 as well as a bronze medal in 1992. "Edwards may be the best player in the world," Alexander Wolff once wrote in Sports Illustrated. "At the very least, she's a spectacular riposte to those who wonder why a woman can't be more like a man."
Edwards's career has been ideally timed to take advantage of a surge in popularity for women's basketball. She was one of the first players named to the fledgling Atlanta Glory basketball team in the new women's American Basketball League, and thus she will help to establish professional women's basketball in America. No one could be more suited to the task: since 1986 she has played in Spain, Italy, Japan, and on many U.S. national teams--often serving as captain or co-captain of her squad. "My attitude, the way I perceive things, the way I live my life, has come through basketball," Edwards declared in Ebony. "The travel and the different cultures; meeting people and dealing with people, the way I carry myself on and off the court.... Everything I could possibly talk about is going to be connected to basketball."
Born in 1964 in Cairo, Georgia, Teresa Edwards grew up the oldest child, and only girl, in a single-parent family. Her mother, Mildred Edwards, had dreamed of becoming a nurse but became pregnant out of wedlock instead. After Teresa and her four brothers were born, Mildred supported them by working any job she could find, from picking vegetables to operating machines on assembly lines. Teresa's father, Leroy Copeland, helped financially as well, but the family never had very much money.
Getting all the chores done was a family project. Everyone pitched in, and the Edwards siblings took extra duties when one of them had sports practices to attend. Teresa was charged with cleaning the house on weekends. "I'd do it so fast my mother would get so mad," she recalled in Sports Illustrated. "She'd tell me, `If you're not going to do it right--and do it hard--don't do it at all.' That's the way I started to look at basketball, and life."
Sports were a passion for all of the Edwards children, Teresa especially. She played sandlot baseball, football, and softball, but her favorite game was basketball. She spent hours shooting baskets at trash cans and an old rim nailed to a pine tree in the front yard of her house. Still, no one in her family ever expected her to become a basketball star. Her strict and conventional mother instructed her not to try out for the middle school girls' team. Edwards ignored the advice and tried out anyway. She went to practices for weeks before she finally told her mother she'd made the team--and then she only confessed because she needed a new pair of sneakers.
"[Basketball] was the only game growing up where I could go up against the boys and beat them," Edwards remembered in Ebony. As she grew to a respectable five-foot-eleven, she discovered that she could beat just about anybody. Soon enough, college recruiters were offering her scholarships. She became the first member of her family ever to attend college when she entered the University of Georgia in 1982.
In Sports Illustrated, Jill Lieber described Edwards's college career as "sparkling." Edwards--soon to be joined by her roommate Katrina McClain--led Georgia to Southeastern Conference championships in 1983, 1984, and 1986 and took her team to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Final Four twice. Nor were her talents confined to a college team. She earned a roster spot on the U.S. women's Olympic basketball team in 1984 and helped the team to a gold medal finish.
In 1986 Edwards participated for the U.S. on a team that won the World Championship and the Goodwill Games. Although she had not finished her degree requirements, she decided to leave college and turn professional. Had she been a man, Edwards might have expected a seven-figure salary, product endorsement deals, television commercials, and instant fame. Instead her pro career took her out of America altogether. She spent two years playing in Italy and three seasons after that in Japan. The experience was draining. Edwards told Essence: "At first you are bitter for having to go over there and play. But once you get past the cultural shock, you're just thankful for the chance to play and see the world for free. I look at it as a blessing."
All told, Edwards spent nine years playing basketball in Europe and Japan, earning as much as $250,000 per year and fighting homesickness and language barriers. Like many other top-rated female players, she jumped at any opportunity to play her sport in the United States--and the opportunities were certainly there.
Edwards was co-captain of the 1988 Olympic basketball team that won the gold medal in Seoul, South Korea. Many observers credited her with the outstanding performance in the gold medal-round game, in which the U.S. beat Yugoslavia 77-70. Throughout the Games she was the U.S. team's second-leading scorer, averaging 16.6 points per game and leading in field goal percentage, assists and steals. Asked how her team compared to the men's squad--which lost to the Soviet Union at the same Olympics--Edwards told Sports Illustrated: "I believe we have been much stronger than them mentally." She added that she had learned to live with the disparity of interest in men's and women's basketball. "I feel I won't be involved in this game when we get to the point when women finally get their due," she said. "We've worked so hard for women's basketball, and we've done all we can. I can't let it upset me. But at the same time, if you get used to things, you can't change them."
Edwards was a member of a hastily-assembled U.S. women's Olympic team that turned in a disappointing performance at the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain. A defeat by the Unified Team in the final round brought her a bronze medal and the determination to keep trying for another gold. Ironically, she almost failed to make the U.S. national team when it re-formed in 1995 to prepare for the Olympics. Edwards was not only 31 at the time, she was coming off a particularly dismal performance at the 1994 World Championships, where she contributed only 21 assists in seven games and shot only 5-for-18 in the championship round. New Olympic coach Tara VanDerveer wondered if Edwards was slowing down and, more importantly, whether Edwards was willing to learn a new system. "I may have been a little skeptical at first," VanDerveer stated in Sports Illustrated. "I didn't want to get into a yearlong fight with a player who was bucking the system. And this system wasn't for everybody."
When she learned that she had made the U.S. national team--the women's "Dream Team"--Edwards broke down and cried for joy. Never mind that she would take a severe pay cut to play for the Olympic team, that she would be on the road almost constantly for a year, that she would have to work harder than ever for one of the most demanding coaches around. She was thrilled. She plunged into VanDerveer's training regimen and prepared herself mentally and physically for her fourth Olympic appearance. Her example proved inspiring to the younger members of the team, but when asked about her leadership role in Ebony, Edwards downplayed its importance. Claiming that her teammates were just praising her "to be nice," she added: "I'm not Mother Teresa, but I'm glad I'm in a position to inspire."
Elsewhere, in Time magazine, Edwards expressed her enthusiasm for being a part of Olympic history. "You realize you're different when you have a lot of college coaches calling your house," she said. "But when you get to this level of international competition as a member of one of the best teams in the world, boom! Now you know `I'm good.' You have to be good to be on this team."
Edwards's greatest moment of inspiration came midway through the grueling year of preparation the women's team underwent for the 1996 Olympics. During a stopover in Atlanta, coach VanDerveer ordered the players' bus to stop at the Georgia Dome, where the Olympics would be played. The coach led the players into the middle of the arena. There, as Edwards watched, each of her teammates tried on one of her Olympic gold medals as an Olympic video played on the big screen overhead. As Wolff observed in Sports Illustrated: "The case can be made--and to those who mistakenly think women's basketball was invented by Sheryl Swoopes in 1993 and perfected by Rebecca Lobo two years later, it should be made--that the growth of the game over the past dozen years is best reflected in the [career] of Edwards, who at the opening ceremonies took the Olympic oath on behalf of all the athletes."
The 1996 Summer Olympics were a joyous homecoming for Edwards who, after traveling some 102,000 miles in the previous year, found herself playing before a hometown crowd. By any yardstick, her performance was memorable. She led the team in assists with a 7.7 average and a team-leading 10 in the final as the United States crushed Brazil 111-87. The Olympic gold medal capped a 60-0 record for the U.S. women's national team and proved beyond doubt that women's basketball could be as exciting and rewarding to watch as men's--or, in the case of the over-hyped men's Olympic "Dream Teams," much more so.
With her fourth Olympics behind her, and a third gold medal hanging in her home, Edwards has begun to reap the rewards of a lifetime spent playing basketball at the edge of the limelight. She was named 1996 U.S.A. Basketball player of the year, and she signed a contract to play professional basketball for the Atlanta Glory, one of the new teams in the recently-formed American Basketball League (ABL). Having earned her bachelor's degree in recreational sciences in 1989, Edwards feels that her future, like her past, lies with basketball--only this time she plans to stay in America. She hopes to contribute to the professional league "if not on the coaching level, the definitely as a general manager," she told Ebony. She added: "I would like to some day own a women's professional team here. I definitely would like to be involved in the growth of this sport here in America on a professional level."
Teresa Edwards has been described as an easygoing person who tends to lavish her money on family and friends rather than spending it on herself. She has bought her mother a house near the one in which she grew up, and she has helped her younger brothers with their college tuition. Theresa Grentz, the coach of the 1992 U.S. Olympic women's basketball team, told Sports Illustrated of Edwards: "She can't be bought. Values are very important to her. Her humility and her simplicity of life make her very special to be around."
Asked about her contribution to sports in Southern Living magazine, Edwards said that she has enjoyed "making something that little girls can look up to." She concluded: "We can look back over our lives as old women with canes and really appreciate what we've done. I like the fact that I'm able to give back all I've gotten from basketball."
Awards
One of only three University of Georgia women's basketball players to have her number retired; named USA Basketball Player of the Year, 1996.
Further Reading
Books
- Johnson, Anne Janette, Great Women in Sports, Visible Ink (Detroit, MI), 1996.
- Ebony, March 1996, pp. 68-70.
- Essence, April 1996, p. 78.
- Jet, November 11, 1996, p. 54.
- Southern Living, June 1996, pp. 28-29.
- Sports Illustrated, October 10, 1988, p. 94; June 8, 1992, p. 41; July 22, 1992, pp. 128-29; August 12, 1996, pp. 59-60.
- Time, July 22, 1996, p. 75.
— Mark Kram
