On March 29, 1998, Chamique Holdsclaw -- normally quiet, polite and charming -- did one of the most arrogant things she has ever done. Leaving the floor to a standing ovation as her Tennessee Vols were about to beat Louisiana Tech for their third straight national title, she held three triumphant fingers high in the air. Then she held up four more fingers -- seven total -- to remind everyone that she had won four straight championships in high school too.1

Holdsclaw hasn't won another title since. After a tournament heartbreaker against Duke her senior year, she was drafted first overall by the Washington Mystics, a team that has not lived up to expectations -- hers or theirs.

Consider these numbers: In high school, Holdsclaw won 106 games and lost four. In college, she won 131 games and lost 17. In three seasons with the Mystics, Chamique Holdsclaw has won 36 games and lost 60.

Says Holdsclaw: "You know, we're having a great time going out there as a team, and getting along, but we're just not winning basketball games." (Mitchell Layton/WNBA Photos)

The losses have been getting to her. Oh, she still speaks softly, smiles easily, and seems to have a kind word for everyone. It's still tempting to think she's easy-going, carefree, even happy-go-lucky -- but that would be a mistake. The woman has an iron will, a tenacious desire to win and, sometimes, a certain wild look in her eye that means it's definitely not time to joke around.

"You gotta have the attitude sometimes," she declares, with just the slightest smile. "I don't hold back. If I feel something, I'm going to say it."

People tend to listen, too, and with good reason. She was (well, not wanting to overstate things, but ...) the best ever to play women's college basketball. 'Mique's Tennessee teams,2 coached by legendary Pat Summitt, won three national titles in four years. Over the entire four-year period, Holdsclaw averaged 20.4 ppg, 8.8 rpg and 51 percent shooting. She won major championships eight years in a row, starting in eighth grade and running through her junior year at Tennessee. In '97-98, the last year of that run, the Lady Volunteers did not lose a single game.

Individual honors? She has collected them all: She was named best female college basketball player in the world by more organizations than there's room to list here. She was named the best college athlete in any sport. She has been first-team and all-star everything. There's a street named after her in Knoxville. She has her own shoe, has garnered Olympic gold, wrote a book, has had her jersey retired and has been in a Jay-Z video. And she's only 23.

You want more?

How about this: She won the Naismith Award as female high school player of the year. Then she won another as female college player of the year. Then, to top it all off, she won yet another, as female college player of the century.

It might seem like she would have left college thinking winning was easy. But that's not it at all. Holdsclaw graduated understanding exactly how difficult winning really is. She shed countless tears getting used to the demands of life under Coach Summitt in Knoxville -- on her way to building a great friendship and winning those three consecutive national championships.

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Now she's trying to get the rest of the Mystics to understand the hard work involved. "You know, we're having a great time going out there as a team, and getting along, but we're just not winning basketball games," she says.

On some level, it's about attitude. "You have your people you take to lunch, and you have your people you take to war," explains Holdsclaw, "and even though I like some people, I'm not gonna take them to war with me. Sometimes that's how I feel, you know, about our team."

She has a plan to start the winning in Washington. It involves a lot of hard work, more vocal leadership and a general toughening up of all the Mystics. Quoting a Tennessee coach, she believes that "tough times don't last, but tough people do." 'Mique clearly intends to outlast the losing (she just bought a house outside DC), and she's not going to do it meekly. "I'm kind of like a quiet leader, and I just try to lead by example," she says. "But then sometimes you have to say something."

This is definitely one of those times.

Holdsclaw has handled tough times before, starting with a childhood in the projects of Queens, NY. The oldest child of parents who were unable to care for their children, Holdsclaw was forced to be the responsible one. Too often it was Chamique who worried about getting her little brother to school and Chamique who had to make sure somebody fed the kids. Eventually the law intervened, taking the two Holdsclaw kids away from their parents. They moved in with her grandmother June Holdsclaw, who still remains perhaps the most important person in Holdsclaw's life.

Her grandmother, a powerful woman by any measure, refused to let it be depressing or excessively dangerous to live in a housing project. Even though she worked full time, she was careful to make sure Chamique and her brother Davon were well cared for at all times. She made rules and enforced them. She made dinner. She made a home.

Chamique matured. She worked hard and stayed out of trouble. Her friends were amazed at her traditional views about boys. She has never smoked, and to this day she hardly drinks. People reacted to her differently; she says she was never offered drugs. It was clear to everyone that she was worth protecting. She was going somewhere.

"The great thing about professional sports is, as long as you stay healthy, you can have a 10-year career. So I just have to be patient and know that at first it's going to be a struggle, but things are going to get better." -- Chamique Holdsclaw

And she had game. Just outside her grandmother's window in Queens is the court where she spent tons of time playing and taking beatings from boys who were not used to seeing a girl on the court. Even other girls made fun of her -- until her name started popping up in the newspapers all the time.

Near the end of her eighth-grade year, perhaps the most influential girls' basketball coach in New York City, Vinny Cannizzaro of Christ the King, went to see her play. It was a practice. She was running drills with one of the boys' teams she was always on. He arrived, watched for a few seconds, then turned on his heel and left. People hardly noticed that he had even been there. Just those few seconds had been enough for him. He knew what he was looking at: the player who would forever change the women's game. Holdsclaw played for him and led Christ the King to four straight championships.

When she was beating boys on New York courts and winning every title imaginable in high school, Holdsclaw was motivated. The titles were nice, but her goal was clear: "to get a college scholarship," she says. "My career was basically focused on academics. I probably would go to law school or do something ..." It crossed her mind that it might be nice to play professional basketball overseas, but she was convinced a good education was most important.

Chamique chose her university carefully. Pat Summitt's Tennessee program has a 100 percent graduation rate and an incredible tradition of success. She wanted an education, and she got it: in class, on the court and in the Tennessee way of life.

Chamique recalls her arrival in Knoxville as "culture shock. I was, like, God, where's the horses and the cows?" After a lifetime in New York City, "it was just really slow."3 She adjusted, though, and now she loves Tennessee. Last year she even lived there most of the offseason, as she worked to get into what she says was the best shape of her life.

During the 2001 season, Holdsclaw averaged 16.8 points and 8.8 rebounds a game. (Greg Shamus/WNBA Photos)

Holdsclaw's always working on her game. "Each year I'm getting better and better," she says. "I'm becoming smarter. I'm learning the game." She's also gearing up to carry more responsibility than ever. "I'm starting to feel good about going out there every day and being a dominant player," she says.

"I always say, college is four years, high school is four years of basketball. The great thing about professional sports is, as long as you stay healthy, you can have a 10-year career. So I just have to be patient and know that at first it's going to be a struggle, but things are going to get better."

Chamique used to think she would be satisfied if basketball would get her a college degree. Now she wants a lot more. "I'm a competitor and I wanna win a championship," she says. "I'm confident I'll get one. You know, it may take a little longer, but I just know we're gonna get one one of these years."

"I'm on a five-year plan," Chamique adds, laughing. "I call it the Allen Iverson plan." She points out that he was always a great player, but it took a few years of getting to know his teammates, and his teammates getting to know him, before he became an MVP and an NBA finalist.

"In Washington, that's sort of what we're going through. We just have to learn to play with each other, and I think we definitely have the right mindset. We're just going to have to get seasoned, get a good opportunity to play together a lot, and once that happens, I think we're on our way."

She has succeeded in the face of so many challenges before; it's hard to believe she will fail this time. Count on it, Washington: One way or another, Chamique Holdsclaw will be making a lot more noise in the WNBA in the years to come.

STUFFING
1. People might argue that, but they won't win.
2. For some of her time there Chamique was part of the "Three Meeks," along with Semeka Randall and Tamika Catchings. The only bad thing she has to say about Tennessee fans is that sometimes they got those names confused.
3. One of Holdsclaw's favorite things to do is shop. In her excellent book, "Chamique: On Family, Focus, and Basketball," she recalls having to adjust to the fact that Knoxville shopping -- featuring all of two malls -- did not compare to the Big Apple. "Maybe I should have taken more time to find out what the city was like ..." she writes. In an interview, discussing the possibility of playing overseas in the offseason, she confessed that Milan would be one likely place because of the great fashion scene there.