Williams named Player of Decade
By Daily Bruin Staff
Feb. 12, 1996 9:00 p.m.
Williams named Player of Decade
By Emmanuelle Ejercito
Daily Bruin Staff
Celebrating 10 years of women’s sports in the Pacific 10, the
conference named former UCLA two-sport letter winner Natalie
Williams the Pac-10 Player of the Decade.
Williams, who graduated in 1994, played for both the basketball
and volleyball teams.
Pac-10 honors are nothing new to Williams. In her senior year,
she was named Pac-10 Player of the Year and earned eight Pac-10
Player of the Week honors. She is also the only athlete in
conference history to earn the honor for three consecutive weeks.
And that’s just in basketball.
In her freshman season, the Kodak All-American played center for
the Bruins, but moved to power forward the following years.
Effective in the post, Williams holds the highest career rebounding
average (12.8) in Pac-10 history. She also owns the three highest
single-season rebounding averages.
A phrase that seems to follow the name Natalie Williams is "the
only player in school history to have …" Williams has the
distinction of having back-to-back games of at least 20 rebounds
and three games of at least 20 rebounds in a season.
Meanwhile, her volleyball career was just as impressive.
Williams led UCLA to two NCAA championships and was recognized
as the MVP of the NCAA Final Four twice. Named All-American by
everyone, Williams holds the school record in kills with 2,115. She
was also chosen as Pac-10 Player of the Week eight times for
volleyball.
Currently, Williams is playing for the U.S. Women’s Volleyball
team, hoping to earn a spot on the 1996 Olympic team.
* * *
The 5,512 fans that witnessed the gut-wrenching game between
UCLA and Stanford last weekend is the largest crowd to have watched
a regular-season women’s basketball game in Pauley Pavilion.
The attendance for Sunday’s game broke the 13-year old
regular-season audience record of 5,133 set during a game against
Southern Cal. In fact, Sunday’s turnout tops the total for the
entire season. In the first nine home games, the Bruins have only
had a total attendance of 5,204.
"For us to play in front of that many people, it makes a
difference," UCLA head coach Kathy Olivier said. "You just get up
for the game. Your adrenaline starts to flow. If I could do
anything, I would encourage people to come back to the
game."Comments to [email protected]
