Virginia's Kymora Johnson was once DQ'd from a national championship because she was on a boys team
This is quite the basketball origin story.
Virginia's Kymora Johnson was once DQ'd from a national championship because she was on a boys team originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here . Kymora Johnson has been shining on the biggest basketball stages for a long time.
Long before she led 10-seed Virginia to a historic upset of 2-seed Iowa on Monday in the NCAA Tournament, she was already making noise at a national level. When Johnson was 10, she played for the Charlottesville Cavaliers, an AAU program that had reached a national championship tournament. The team was disqualified from the national tourney because Johnson was on the team.
The reason? Johnson was a girl playing on a boys team. Yahoo wrote a story about this more than a decade ago, because the elimination of the team went viral.
Johnson's team wore all-pink uniforms in protest despite not actually being allowed to play. MORE: Is Bill Self retiring as Kansas coach? The Yahoo story also writes that Johnson offered to sit out the tournament so the rest of her team to play, but they stood in solidarity with her.