Venus Lacy (some sources give her name as Venus Lacey, born February 9, 1967) is an American former star
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...
player, at the high school, college, Olympic and professional levels. A wide-bodied, muscular
center
Center or centre may refer to:
Mathematics
*Center (geometry), the middle of an object
* Center (algebra), used in various contexts
** Center (group theory)
** Center (ring theory)
* Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentrici ...
, at her best Lacy was an intimidating force inside the paint, both scoring and rebounding. Born in
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia, it also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, ...
, she won championships at every level, but her American professional career was diminished by injuries she sustained in a 1997 car accident.
High school and college
A local sports heroine (a city parkway is named after her), Lacy led Chattanooga's Brainerd High School to the state championship in 1984.
Venus Lacy attended
Louisiana Tech University
Louisiana Tech University (Louisiana Tech, La. Tech, or simply Tech) is a public research university in Ruston, Louisiana. It is part of the University of Louisiana System and classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activ ...
, which she led to the
NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Championship
The NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 women's college basketball teams from the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic ...
in
1988
File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Australian ...
. The next year, the Lady Techsters made the
1989 Final Four, but lost there to
Auburn
Auburn may refer to:
Places Australia
* Auburn, New South Wales
* City of Auburn, the local government area
*Electoral district of Auburn
*Auburn, Queensland, a locality in the Western Downs Region
*Auburn, South Australia
*Auburn, Tasmania
*Aub ...
. In her Senior year, 1990, Louisiana Tech went undefeated through the regular season, and was ranked #1 in the national polls. That year Lacy was a consensus all-American, and was named the
WBCA Player of the Year The Women's Basketball Coaches Association Player of the Year award is presented annually to the best women's college basketball players in NCAA Division II and NCAA Division III, Division III as voted by the WBCA membership. From 1983 to 2000, the ...
. The 1990 team again made the
Final Four, where they were once again upset by their nemesis Auburn. Lacy finished her NCAA career with 266 points scored in the tournament, putting her among the all-time top 10 women at the time. Lacy was inducted into the
Louisiana Tech University Athletic Hall of Fame The Louisiana Tech University Athletic Hall of Fame was established in 1984 to honor student-athletes, coaches, administrators, and benefactors who have been highly successful at Louisiana Tech
Louisiana Tech University (Louisiana Tech, La. Tec ...
in 2011.
Louisiana Tech statistics
Source
USA Basketball
Lacy played with the USA team at the
1991 Pan American Games, held in
Havana, Cuba
Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center. . The team finished with a record of 4–2, but managed to win the bronze medal. The USA team lost a three point game to Brazil, then responded with wins over Argentina and Cuba, earning a spot in the medal round. The next game was a rematch against Cuba, and this time the team from Cuba won a five point game. The USA beat Canada easily to win the bronze. Lacy averaged 9.4 points per game.
Lacy was also a member of the gold-medal-winning
1996 Olympic team. Lacy was the last player added to the USA's 12-woman roster, joining the team midway through its year-long exhibition tour to add size in the paint. The team went an undefeated 52-0 in this unprecedented Olympic preparation year, against a variety of college, all-star and international teams.
Professional career
Because the U.S. lacked a women's pro league, Lacy's professional career began overseas, where she played for teams in Greece, Italy and Japan. She led Greece to a European championship in the 1995-1996 season.
Lacy was the first player selected by the
Seattle Reign
OL Reign is an American professional women's soccer team based in Seattle, Washington. Founded by Bill and Teresa Predmore in 2012 as Seattle Reign FC, it was one of eight inaugural members of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). In 2020, ...
in the
ABL Draft on June 19, 1996. From this promising start, her luck seemed to turn sour. Lacy was seriously injured in a car accident on February 4, 1997, and completed her season in Seattle on the injured list. After that year, she was selected by the ABL's expansion
Long Beach Stingrays
The Long Beach Stingrays was a women's professional basketball team. It existed for only the 1997–98 season, and was a member of the American Basketball League (ABL).
The Stingrays played most of their home games at the Walter Pyramid on the ...
. Expansion teams typically fare poorly in their first several years, but this was an exception: Long Beach made the ABL Finals in their first and only season, where they lost the championship to the
Columbus Quest
The Columbus Quest was a professional women's basketball franchise located in Columbus, Ohio in the now-defunct American Basketball League (ABL). They were one of the league's original eight teams that started play in 1996. In the league's b ...
, two games to three. (After winning the first two games, played in Long Beach due to scheduling conflicts in Columbus, the Stingrays were unable to win in Columbus.) Notwithstanding their on-court success, the Long Beach franchise folded after one year, and next year Lacy was once again drafted by another ABL expansion team, the even shorter-lived
Nashville Noise. Just 15 games into the 1998-1999 season, on December 22, 1998, the ABL itself folded.
No doubt due to her injuries, Lacy went undrafted by any
WNBA team in the special post-ABL consolidation draft. However, midway through the 1999 season, Lacy was picked up by the
New York Liberty
The New York Liberty are an American professional basketball team based in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The Liberty compete in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) as part of the league's Eastern Conference. The team was f ...
to fill in for their injured All-star center,
Rebecca Lobo. Lacy played in 17 games that year for the Liberty, and in 2 more in 2000, but without much success. She has not played in the WNBA since.
References
External links
Chattanooga City Council Resolution dated July 16, 1996 dedicating Venus Lacey (sic) ParkwayChattanooga City Council Resolution dated Aug. 6, 1996 honoring Venus Lacy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lacy, Venus
1967 births
Living people
African-American basketball players
All-American college women's basketball players
American women's basketball players
Basketball players at the 1991 Pan American Games
Basketball players at the 1996 Summer Olympics
Basketball players from Tennessee
Centers (basketball)
Long Beach Stingrays players
Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters basketball players
Medalists at the 1996 Summer Olympics
Nashville Noise players
New York Liberty players
Olympic gold medalists for the United States in basketball
Pan American Games bronze medalists for the United States
Pan American Games medalists in basketball
Seattle Reign (basketball) players
Medalists at the 1991 Pan American Games
21st-century African-American people
21st-century African-American women
20th-century African-American sportspeople
20th-century African-American women
20th-century African-American people
United States women's national basketball team players