Sue Bird, Sylvia Fowles, Cappie Pondexter and Alana Beard will headline the Ladies’s Basketball Corridor of Fame Class of 2025.
The 4 former gamers — stars on the collegiate stage, multiple-time WNBA All-Stars and WNBA champions — had been introduced as Corridor of Famers on Friday and can be inducted throughout a June 14 ceremony on the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville.
Additionally to be inducted are coaches Lucille Kyvallos, who served as head coach for West Chester State Faculty (Pa.) and Queens Faculty (N.Y.), and Mark Campbell of Union College (Tenn.), in addition to Danielle Donehew, government director of the Ladies’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation and a girls’s basketball administrator.
“We’re honored to pay tribute to seven distinguished legends of this distinctive sport,” Corridor president Dana Hart mentioned. “They exemplify the very best requirements in girls’s basketball and have made substantial contributions to the game together with shaping the sport’s historic trajectory.”
Bird received at each stage, together with 5 Olympic gold medals, 4 WNBA championships with Seattle and two NCAA titles at UConn. A 12-time All-Star, she was chosen as one of many WNBA’s greatest 25 gamers of all time in 2021, together with Fowles and Pondexter.
“She managed to be the brains behind the scenes and simply made certain that all the things went precisely the way in which it was alleged to go,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma mentioned Friday night time. “After which she did that within the WNBA, and she or he did that within the Olympics, and did it higher than anyone’s ever executed it.
“There’s not been some extent guard taking part in the sport of ladies’s basketball that is performed it higher, or longer, or had extra success.”
Fowles received WNBA titles with Minnesota in 2015 and 2017 and was MVP of the Finals each instances. She was on the WNBA all-defensive workforce eight instances.
“Syl is probably the most dominant middle to ever play within the WNBA and was an unattainable matchup on each ends of the ground,” Minnesota head coach Cheryl Reeve mentioned. “Syl would outwork you on duck-ins to attain the ball, beat you to the spot to disclaim a submit contact, and are available throughout the lane from the assistance aspect to ship a shot to the fifth row. However the pleasure she dropped at the workforce, the franchise, and the fanbase day-after-day is what we are going to cherish ceaselessly.”
Beard was a two-time WNBA Defensive Participant of the 12 months and received a WNBA title with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2016.
Pondexter received two WNBA titles with Phoenix in 2007 and 2009, incomes Finals MVP honors in 2007.
Data from The Related Press was used on this report.