Lusia Harris

Lusia Harris-Stewart (born February 10, 1955) is a pioneer of women's basketball. She was born in Minter City, Mississippi, the tenth of eleven children.

She always wanted to beat her siblings in basketball and eventually grew to six feet three inches. She planned to attend Alcorn A&M University, which did not have a women's basketball team. She was asked by Coach Maragaret Wade, who was starting a women's team if she would attend Delta State University, in Cleveland, Mississippi. This was before Title IX, so there were no sports scholarships for girls, so she attended school on a combination of academic scholarships and work study.

Luisa led Delta State to win three consecutive AIAW (before the NCAA) championships, and was named tournament most valuable player each time. Her college career record was an outstanding 109-5.

She played on the first U.S. women's Olympic basketball team in 1976 in Montreal and led the team to a silver medal after just six weeks of practice.

The New Orleans Jazz drafted her in the seventh round of the 1977 draft,cite web | title=basketball-reference.com: 1977 NBA Draft|url=http://www.basketball-reference.com/draft/NBA_1977.html| accessdate=2008-04-20] making her the first and only female drafted by a NBA team.cite web | last = Kim | first = Randy | title=Draft Oddities|url=http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:peawICyw1PwJ:www.nba.com/draft2003/draft_oddities_030619.html| date=2008]

After graduation, she worked for Delta State as an admissions counselor and assistant coach, after a brief stint with the short-lived Women's Basketball League (WBL) in 1980.

She was the first player to win the Broderick Cup for Outstanding Women's Basketball Player. She was the first female player inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and was in the first class inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.

Notes

External links

* [http://www.hoophall.com/halloffamers/bhof-lusia-harris-stewart.html Basketball Hall of Fame page on Harris]
* [http://hoopedia.nba.com/index.php/Lusia_Harris Hoopedia wiki page on Harris]