Swoopes, Sheryl

Sheryl Swoopes, in full Sheryl Denise Swoopes, (born March 25, 1971, Brownfield, Texas, U.S.), American basketball player who won three Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards (2000, 2002, and 2005) and four WNBA titles (1997–2000) as a member of the Houston Comets.

After being named the 1991 national Junior College Player of the Year, Swoopes transferred to Texas Tech University. There she won the National Player of the Year award in her senior season as she led the Lady Raiders to the 1993 National Collegiate Athletic Association national championship (where Swoopes set a record for most points scored in the title game, with 47).

She joined the Comets before the WNBA’s inaugural campaign in 1997, and she helped the team win that season’s WNBA title. Swoopes and the Comets reeled off three additional championships in the next three years, the last of which (in 2000) came after a regular season in which she scored a career-high 20.7 points per game and won the league’s MVP and Defensive Player of the Year awards. Swoopes won both the MVP and Defensive Player of the Year awards again in 2002. She repeated as Defensive Player of the Year in 2003 after leading the league in steals per game, and in 2005 she became the league’s first three-time MVP.

In 2005 Swoopes made national news when she revealed that she was gay, becoming the most prominent athlete in a North American team sport to do so. (However, in 2011, she announced her engagement to a man; the couple married in 2017.) A back injury limited her to appearances in just three games in 2007, and in 2008 she joined the Seattle Storm but was released at the end of the season. Swoopes played with the Greek team Esperides in 2010 and joined the WNBA’s Tulsa Shock in 2011. She did not return to professional basketball in 2012. In 2017 Swoopes returned to Texas Tech University, serving as director of player development for the women’s basketball team before being named an assistant coach.

Swoopes was a five-time All-WNBA first-team selection, and she won three Olympic gold medals as a member of the U.S. women’s basketball team (1996, 2000, and 2004). She was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016.