NORFOLK — Old Dominion women’s basketball coach DeLisha Milton-Jones’ list of accolades stretches seemingly for miles. An All-American in college at the University of Florida, she enjoyed a 17-year career in the WNBA after college, where she played in 499 games — a record at the time of her retirement — and earned two All-Star selections while being part of the Los Angeles Sparks’ back-to-back championships in 2001 and 2002. While those awards are impressive, Milton-Jones holds her Olympic gold medals as the best achievements in her career.
“It’s the top, it’s the crème de la crème,” Milton-Jones said. “It’s the top because of everything that it represents. You were the best in the world.
You can be a world champion in the WNBA, but you’re still on domestic soil. But to take your talents and to go anywhere in this world and play against whatever country’s best, and you can crown yourself the winner, yeah, it’s always gonna be (at the top).” Milton-Jones has two Olympic gold medals, one from the 2000 Games in Sydney and another from 2008 in Beijing.
She remembers the call telling her she was selected for the national team in 2000 like it was yesterday, saying she felt “a plethora of emotions. “When you know that you’ve been selected, it’s like Fourth of July fireworks, the coldest chills you could get with the biggest goosebumps,” Milton-Jones said. “It’s a plethora of emotions that you go through knowing that you accomplished .