The Queen of Basketball

When she was a child, Lusia “Lucy” Harris was teased for being “long and tall and that’s all.” She proved them wrong when she led the Delta State Lady Statesmen to three consecutive national championships in the mid-1970s — the start of the Title IX era. As the first woman to score a basket in the Olympics, Lucy helped the U.S. take home the silver medal. Harris wanted to keep playing, she recalls, but “there was no place to go.” Recounting her glory years, she isn’t bitter. Instead, she wonders what might have been if she’d come of age a few years later.