As she grew up in Shorewood in the 1970s, Cathy Boswell wanted to do the impossible as an athlete.
“One of my first loves, as I tell everybody and they laugh, was football,” she said. “I wanted to play football so bad, but I couldn’t. And I almost went out for the (junior high school) baseball team.”
Instead, she worked her marvels on the basketball court. She became a star player at Joliet West High School, then shone at Illinois State University in Normal. In 1984, she played on the U.S. Olympic women’s team that won a gold medal in Los Angeles. And after playing in women’s professional leagues in Europe and South America from 1983 through last year, Boswell will do what once seemed totally out of reach — play pro ball near her home.
Boswell, who turns 36 on Nov. 10, is one of the stars of the new Chicago Condors team in the American Basketball League. The Condors will debut on Nov. 6.
“I have been all around the world playing and to get a call to come play close to home was something great for me,” Boswell said. “For me, this is the closing of the circle of life.”
That path began in Joliet as the third of Henry and Clarice Boswell’s four children. Her family moved to Shorewood when she was 9.
“She really showed at an early age that she was athletic in terms of coordination and agility and all those things,” said Henry Boswell. “She learned how to dribble a basketball when she was very young.”
Besides football, she enjoyed softball, volleyball and basketball, making the varsity basketball team at Troy Junior High School as a 6th grader. At Joliet West High School, Boswell also played on the softball team.
She made Joliet West’s girls varsity basketball team as a freshman in the fall of 1976. In the spring of 1977, the first year for a girls state basketball tournament in Illinois, the Tigers advanced to the Finals, losing to Centralia High School in the quarterfinals.
“That was a turning point, when I knew I would focus on basketball,” Boswell said of playing in the Finals Downstate. “I went to basketball camps, and eventually I dropped softball and played basketball year-round.”
In 1978, Joliet West went 29-2 en route to winning the state championship. Boswell scored a team-high 26 points to lead the Tigers to a 64-48 title victory over the Lincoln High School Railsplitters, who hail from 20 miles north of Springfield.
In 1979, the Tigers fell short of returning to the Finals. Later that spring, Boswell graduated a year early from Joliet West, having averaged 22.3 points a game during her high school career. Jo Streit, now a health teacher at Carl Sandburg High School in Orland Park, coached Boswell during her first two seasons before taking a job in Arizona.
“Cathy was special in so many ways,” Streit said. “She was the consummate team player. She didn’t want the focus to be on her, she just wanted to play. She was always so humble and sincere. You just knew this girl was going to do everything she set out to do.”
Courted by major schools, including UCLA, Boswell chose to attend Illinois State, where she had attended summer basketball camps since after 7th grade.
“At our first team meeting during her freshman year, when we were discussing goals, Cathy said she wanted to be an Olympian and it is unusual for a kid to have that kind of focus at that age,” said Jill Hutchison, the Redbirds’ women’s basketball coach since 1970.
“She is certainly a gifted athlete, but she has refined her skills and kept herself in shape. From what I have seen on television, she is a smarter player. She has learned how to play outside herself.”
At ISU, Boswell earned All-America honors in her senior year. She still holds Redbirds women’s basketball records for career scoring (2,005 points) and rebounds (1,063). She and former Bulls coach Doug Collins are the only ISU basketball players to have their numbers retired.
Boswell graduated from ISU in 1983, earning a degree in parks and recreation administration. After playing in Germany for a year, she successfully tried out for the Olympic team, which included Cheryl Miller, the sister of Indianapolis Pacers star Reggie Miller and a former television analyst for NBA games.
At the 1984 Games, Boswell played as a shooting guard, both as a starter and as a reserve, as the Americans easily swept to the gold medal in six games. She especially remembers the medal ceremony.
“At that moment, I knew what it meant to represent your country,” she recalled. “I went through high school and college listening to the national anthem, waiting for the game to get started. But when you’re up on that podium and you’re putting a medal over your shoulders and you’re hearing the national anthem, that is when it really hits home.”
After the Olympics, Boswell returned to Europe, playing in Spain for five seasons and in Italy for one year. She later moved to South America, playing in Brazil for seven seasons.
“I’m really glad I did it because it makes me appreciate being able come back and play here,” she said of playing in foreign countries where she learned to speak Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.
“It was a great experience, because I got to meet so many different people and live in their country . . . and be mixed in their culture and understand why people think the way they do,” she said. “The competition was great, and I think I grew as a player.”
When the ABL was formed in 1996, Boswell considered returning to the United States but decided to wait a year to see how the league fared. The ABL has a 44-game schedule and plays its games during the winter. (The rival Women’s National Basketball League, which is affiliated with the NBA, plays during the summer.)
Playing for the Atlanta Glory last winter, Boswell was the team’s sixth player, averaging 6.1 points and 2.7 rebounds a game. The Condors made Boswell (whose old Atlanta team is defunct) their No. 1 draft choice. She is the oldest player on the team, which opens its season Nov. 6 against the Nashville Noise at the University of Illinois-Chicago Pavilion.
The Condors will be a young team, with players including Ashley Berggren, who just finished her career at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and former Whitney Young High School star E.C. Hill.
“Cathy is a very good professional,” said Condors coach Jim Cleamons, a former Bulls assistant coach and head coach of the Dallas Mavericks. “Cathy is an offensive scoring machine, but I don’t think scoring is on her mind. She is learning to play with her new teammates . . . and seeing where she can take advantage of her skills.”
Boswell’s family, including sisters Connie Martin of Aurora and Claudia Boswell-Ellis and brother Christopher, both of Joliet, are eager to see her in action in Chicago. Her father saw her play in Italy in 1987, while her mother and siblings saw her play at the Olympics and as a pro in Atlanta last year.
“We’re pretty elated . . . this really is a thrill,” Henry Boswell said of seeing Cathy play in Chicago.
“We hope she can pursue her goal of being a team leader, and I’ll be sitting there on pins and needles,” added Clarice Boswell.
“I think Chicago is ready for a women’s professional basketball team,” Cathy Boswell said.
With labor issues delaying the start of the NBA season, Boswell thinks the Condors can create their own niche among fans suffering from Bulls withdrawal.
“It is a known fact that people are crazy about basketball here in Chicago, and they’re going to want to see professional basketball,” she said. “Hopefully, we can get a lot of people to watch us and like us enough to come back, not because of the lockout but because they like us and they like our style of play.”
Boswell said she plans to be a team player, doing whatever she can to help her team as they compete for a league championship.
“This the icing on the cake,” Boswell said of finishing her career in Chicago. “This is the full circle for me. It is funny how everything works out.”
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For Condor ticket information, call 312-492-8800.
