All About Sports

Sue Bird was born on October 16, 1980 in Long Island, New York. She is the younger of two children to Herschel and Nancy Bird. The original family name was “Boorda.” In 2006, Bird acquired Israeli citizenship. She still maintains her citizenship in the United States. [1] Sue’s role model as a young child was her older sister Jen. Jen did a lot of recreation stuff to stay active. [2] Out of all the activities, Sue’s favorite was basketball. Sue also played soccer, tennis, and track. [3] Sue became a very good player and started playing AAU basketball in the sixth grade. She played her freshman and sophomore years at Syosset High School but wanted more competition. She decided to enroll at the basketball powerhouse Christ The King Regional High School in Queens, New York. Christ the King also produced well known basketball stars Chamique Holdsclaw, Lamar Odom, Jason Williams and Speedy Claxton. [4] Sue spent two seasons at Christ the King and the Royals went undefeated in both seasons. In the second season her team won the New York state championship, and the national title. Sue won many awards including the New York State Player of the Year, and the New York Daily News Player of the Year. Bird was named a WBCA All-American.[5] She participated in the WBCA High School All-America Game, where she scored eleven points Sue chose UConn over Stanford, Vanderbilt and many others. She chose UConn because UConn was close to home, and the UConn program had a winning tradition like the one at Christ the King. [7] She suffered an ACL injury, eight games into her freshman season. She was not able to redshirt because she played in more than 20% of the team’s games. [8] In her sophomore season (1999-2000) she came back to lead the team to a 36-1 record and won the Big East Championship and the 2000 NCAA Women’s Division I Basketball Tournament. The Huskies went 32-3 in Sue’s junior season. The last loss was to Big East rival Notre Dame in the Final Four. That was the last loss of Sue’s college career as the Huskies went an undefeated 39-0 in Sue’s 2002 senior season. In that season, Sue won the Wade Trophy and Naismith Award as College Player of the Year. She finished her UConn career on many of the record lists. She currently ranks #24 on the 1,000 point list with 1,378 points, #2 in assists with 585, and over 200 steals. She also ranks number 1 in three point field goal percentage (45.9).