Sylvia Fowles, 2016 Team USA Olympic Basketball Star, On How She Started, Her Training Routine

Sylvia Fowles, US Olympic Basketball Player, On… by uSports

Sylvia Fowles, a member of the 2016 US Women’s Basketball Team who will be competing in this summer’s Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil, discussed how and when she first got into the sport, what a typical day of training looks like for her, and her future career goals.

Sylvia Fowles, 2016 Team USA Olympic Basketball Star, Training Routine

Fowles, 30, was one of the more than 75 Team USA Olympians to attend the 100-Day Countdown celebration in New York’s Times Square on April 27.

“I first got into playing basketball because of peer pressure,” Fowles told uSports. “And after being stalked for two years from my middle school coach, I finally gave in, and decided to just go out there and give it a try. That was my eighth grade year of middle school.”

Fowles, a native of Miami, who has played as a center for the Minnesota Lynx in the WNBA since July 2015, was named MVP of the 2015 WNBA Finals. She was drafted by the Chicago Sky out of LSU as the second overall pick in 2008. She played for the Sky from 2008-2014. She is the third WNBA player to dunk in an all star game, following Michelle Snow in 2006 and Lisa Leslie in 2005.

Fowles also won two Olympic gold medals as a member of the US Women’s National Basketball Team: one in Beijing in 2008, and again in London in 2012.

With regards to her typical training day, Fowles stated:

“I get up, eat breakfast, depending on what we have to do first, I try to get a court workout in before the whole team gets on the floor. Practice weights afterwards, treatment, and then pretty much go home after that.”

When asked what her ultimate goal in her career was going forward, Fowles simply said, “To enjoy the moment. We get caught up in a lot of meeting and greeting people, we get caught up in the gold and the task that’s ahead of us that we forget to enjoy the moment that we’re in.”

Finally, we asked Fowles what she believed would be different going into her third Olympic Games compared to the previous two times. “I think in the end the atmosphere is pretty much the same, besides just a couple of new players, and just going out there and having fun together,” Fowles said. “You never know when the team’s gonna switch up and I think this moment defines that. You never know who you’re going to be around, so we just have to enjoy it while we can.”