Frank Thomas

Witt Notable Sports Figures
1990. She appeared off the ice during the 1992
Olympics in Albertville, France, as a commentator for
CBS-TV. In 1993, she covered the World Championships
in Prague, Czechoslovakia, for NBC-TV.
Witt decided in 1993 to begin training for the 1994
Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. Many scoffed at the
decision; at age 28, she was almost twice as old as her
competitors. An eighth-place finish at the European
Championships did not bode well for her Olympic
chances, and was a blow to her confidence. Witt dedicated
her 1994 Olympic performance of “Where Have All
the Flowers Gone?” to war-torn Sarajevo, where she had
won her first gold a decade earlier. The performance also
marked the first time her parents had ever seen her skate.
Though she finished seventh, the performance was as important
to Witt as any that had earned her the gold.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Address: Katarina Witt, c/o Parenteau Guidance, Gail
Parenteau, 132 East 35th St., Ste. 3J, New York, NY
10016.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Books
Kelly, Evelyn. Katarina Witt. Philadelphia: Chelsea
House, 1999.
Smith, Pohla. Superstars of Women’s Figure Skating.
Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1997.
Other
Katarina Witt Official Web site. http://www.katarina-witt.
com (January 15, 2003).
“Katarina Witt,” Skating Source. http://www.skating
source.com/witt.shtml (January 15, 2003).
Lynette Woodard
1959-
American basketball player
Sketch by Brenna Sanchez
Considered one of basketball’s greatest female players,
Lynette Woodard excelled in the sport during
her professional career in the 1980s and 1990s. A twotime
Olympic Game basketball player, Woodard served
as co-captain of the United States’ gold medal team in
1984. She became the first female member of the famed
1794
Lynette Woodard
Harlem Globetrotters in 1985, and was named Big Eight
Player of the Decade for the 1980s. In 1996 Woodard
was named best female player in Big Eight Conference
history, having set career records for scoring and rebounding.
After a four-year retirement in the mid-1990s,
Woodard returned to join the new Women’s National
Basketball Association (WNBA), playing for the Cleveland
Rockers and the Detroit Shock. A worldwide basketball
star, Woodard is known equally well in her native
United States as in Italy and Japan, where she has also
played professionally.
Born on August 12, 1959, in Wichita, Kansas,
Lynette Woodard was one of four children born to Lugene,
a fireman, and Dorothy, a homemaker. When
Woodard was five years old, a U.S. Air Force jet crashed
in her neighborhood, killing 30 residents and just missing
the Woodard house. By 1970 an area of destroyed
homes had been transformed from a vacant lot into a
public park with a full-size basketball court. This was
Piatt Park, where Woodard developed her talent for the
sport. “We played pick-up games every day,” she told
the New York Times. “Soon the guys would pick me before
their friends.”
Woodard’s fascination with basketball had begun
when she was eight years old, when her cousin Hubert
“Geese” Ausbie, a player with the Harlem Globetrotters,
paid a visit during a tour. Ausbie mesmerized his young
cousin, spinning a basketball on his finger and demonstrating
other signature ‘Trotters skills. Woodard never