12 Courtney Vandersloot (she/her)
By Maya Laku (he/him)
The years of 2023 and 2024 were watershed moments in Women’s Basketball. During that time, Louisiana State University and Iowa’s National Championship pulled a record of 9.9 million viewers. In 2024, viewership exploded to 18.9 million viewers to watch the National Championship game between South Carolina and Iowa. The women’s viewing not only competed with the mens’ tournament, but even some college football games of those seasons. In the last few years, the women’s game has seen the emergence of household names including Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark, young phenoms like Juju Watkins and powerhouses such as Dawn Staley’s in South Carolina. It confirmed something many knew, women’s sports have always been “viable,” all it needed was exposure.
The Pacific Northwest for decades has been a hotbed for basketball talent. Savvier basketball aficionados have long acknowledged this fact. Before players such as Cameron Brink and Hailey Van Lith, there was Courtney Vandersloot. Hailing from Covington, Washington, a sleepy suburb nestled in Maple Valley, twenty miles southeast of Seattle. Vandersloot first gained local recognition for leading the Kentwood Conquerors to a 69-13 win-loss record in only her three years there. In her senior year, the point guard led Kentwood 28-1 record, en route to a 3rd place finish in the 2007 4A Girls State Tournament. She scored a total of 113 total points, one shy of the all-time tournament record. Vandersloot left the school as the all-time leading scorer with 1,684 points.
It was at Gonzaga University where she made herself a household name on a national level. Initially, Vandersloot was heavily criticized for signing with the Bulldogs, as many saw her choosing to be a “big fish in a small pond.” She would go on to put them on the map, leading the Bulldogs to a Sweet 16 appearance in the Women’s National Tournament during her senior year, upsetting blue bloods such as North Carolina. The 5’8” point guard led the West Coast Conference in assists for three straight seasons, winning WCC Player of the Year three times. She would end up as the only player of any gender to reach 2,000 points and 1,000 assists in their career.
Drafted by the Chicago Sky in 2011, Vandersloot was the steady hand which would go on to help lead Chicago to their first WNBA championship in 2021, making the WNBA all-star game and earning second team All-WNBA honors. During her time in Chicago, she would be top ten in MVP votes four times. In 2020, she went to break the single-game assist record with eighteen, passing to her then fiancé, now wife Allie Quigley for the eighteenth assist. Eventually, Vandersloot would leave the Windy City for the Big Apple, joining the New York Liberty in 2023, where she resides as of 2024.
