In 1975, Retha Swindell joined the Texas women’s basketball team to become the first Black woman in program history. Inducted into the Texas women’s athletics in 2001, Swindell will be the fifth former Longhorn women’s basketball star to be inducted into the Texas Black Sports Hall of Fame.
Swindell joined the program just three years after the passing of Title IX, which allowed women’s basketball at Texas to transition from an intramural to a varsity sport. Even with all of the growth of the sport, 45 years after her graduation, she is still the all-time leading rebounder in program history with 1,759 and eighth all-time in scoring with 1,795 points.
Yet being a pioneer was never Swindell’s dream.
“I have a shirt that says ‘Living Legend,’ so I guess they’re trying to tell me this, but I just see it as day-to-day taking advantage of what I had,” Swindell said to Spectrum Local News in March 2023. “My thought process has always been pretty simple. It’s not trying to be a trailblazer. Your best becomes the foundation for somebody else.”
Swindell’s coach during her first two years at Texas was Rodney Page, another trailblazer who made history by being the program’s first Black head coach.
“The first time I saw (Swindell) was 1974,” Page said to the Longhorn Network in 2020. “I (saw) her on the basketball court, she (moved) so well. (She had) lateral quickness, (was) light on her feet, quick to get up. Movements that you can’t necessarily teach.”
The former center said she joined Page’s team with assistance from academic scholarships.
“(The scholarship) meant that I could go to college and my parents didn’t have to pay for it,” Swindell said to Longhorn Network. “As I learned more about it, I became more proud of the accomplishment.”
Swindell lost her mom in November of her sophomore year. Despite the pain and grief, she didn’t quit her sport, as Swindell said quitting was “not in her DNA.”
“Her mom would not have wanted her to quit,” Page said. “Her mom would have wanted her to go on, cause she’s a standard bearer for the Swindell family. We’re breaking a barrier at a time where there’s so many stereotypes and erroneous beliefs about Black athletes, men and women. The narrative at that time was terrible, ‘They can play ball but they don’t have the academics.’ She was the one to break that barrier, she was the full package.”
Swindell will join other legends and trailblazers such as Earl Campbell, Telisa Young, Bruce Chambers and eight other previously inducted Longhorns in the Texas Black Sports Hall of Fame on Feb. 24 in Dallas.
