THE INAUGURAL BALLER Lusia Harris

When Lusia Harris convinced her parents to let her try out for High School basketball, she never could’ve anticipated she’d end up scoring the first basket in Olympic Women’s Basketball history. Facing unprecedented hurdles at every step of her career, she broke records, made history, and changed women’s sports forever – and that’s just the beginning!

Olivia interviews Andrew Maraniss, author of Inaugural Ballers: The True Story of the First Us Women’s Olympic Basketball Team.

Watch the Oscar-winning documentary The Queen of Basketball here.

Lucy Harris wearing her Team USA Olympics jacket and with her silver medal around her neck, smiling at the camera. — Lucy Harris after the 1976 Olympics
Photo courtesy of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame

Team photo showing a women's college basketball team in white basketball jerseys, dark shorts and knee-high sports socks. There is only one Black woman on the team - Lusia Harris. — Delta State Lady Statesmen Basketball Team 1974-75
photo courtesy of Delta State University

Road sign with a line drawing of a woman shooting a basketball and the text: Minter City, home of Lusia Harris, Mississippi's first All-American women's college basketball player. Center DSY 1975-1976. National Women's Basketball Champs. Margaret Wade, Coach. — Sign erected in Minter City honoring Lusia Harris after her 1975-76 college season.
photo in Creative Commons domain

Andrew Maraniss is a New York Times bestselling author of sports and social justice nonfiction for teens and adults. His books include Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South (winner of the RFK Book Awards Special Recognition Prize and the Lillian Smith Book Award), Games of Deception (winner of the Sydney Taylor Honor Award), Singled Out (named one of Esquire Magazine’s “Top 100 Baseball Books Ever Written”) and his latest, Inaugural Ballers (a 2002 Book of the Year by Kirkus). Andrew is director of special projects at the Vanderbilt University Athletic Department and lives in Nashville. Follow him on Twitter @trublu24.