Dawn Staley

Basketball

She drives. She spins. She hits teammates with passes - right on the hands, often as not - as though she is playing this game with eyes in the back of her head.

She says she doesn’t want to be noticed - really - but how can you help it? Dawn Staley plays like a guy.

It’s not a coincidence.

“I grew up playing with the guys,” said Staley, backup point guard on the United States women’s basketball team that will play Australia in today’s Olympic tournament semifinal at the Georgia Dome. “You see all these incredible things they do, and some of it rubs off on you. That’s what happened.”

At 5-foot-6 and 125 pounds, the 26-year-old Staley does plenty of incredible things, though most of them, by necessity, are fairly close to the ground. Still, during four memorable years at the University of Virginia, her flashy style was a revelation to the women’s game, and there hasn’t been a player quite like her since.

Trouble was, hardly anyone noticed. Worst of all, there was no place in America for her to go after her college days were done, forcing her to take her game to Europe to make a living.

For Staley, rectifying that situation is part of this Olympic dream. At age 10, she began tagging along when her brothers would head out to the neighborhood playgrounds and recreation centers.

Not everyone was thrilled to see her, of course. It was bad enough that she was a girl, for heaven’s sake, but she was a short one, too.

“I just had to keep going out there every single day,” she said. “I had to wait around.

“Then it got to a point where I was accepted, and I was one of the first players picked. That’s a great honor, growing up on the street.”