Professional
In 2003 she was drafted as the No. 3 overall pick in the first round by the Detroit Shock in the WNBA Draft.
In just her first year in the league, Ford led the Shock from a worst to first record and a WNBA championship in 2003. She is the first player to have won the WNBA Rookie of the Year Award and a WNBA championship in the same year. Afterwards, she played for the Dallas Fury in the National Women's Basketball League (NWBL) under Coach Nancy Lieberman.
On July 15, 2007, Ford won the WNBA All-Star Game MVP Award in Washington, D.C. when the East beat the West 103–99.
Ford missed the rest of the 2008 WNBA season due to an anterior cruciate ligament injury in her right knee, sustained on July 22, 2008 during a game against the Los Angeles Sparks. A brawl had broken out and Ford sustained the injury while attempting to restrain her teammate.
During the 2009 WNBA season, Ford averaged 7.4 rebounds per game and 8.6 points per game.
In January 2010, Ford signed a deal with Polish team CCC Aquapark Polkowice from 1st division league Ford Germaz Ekstraklasa (PLKK).
On September 12, 2012, The Canik Belediyesi basketball club was announced as having signed Ford, as well as New York Liberty veteran Janel McCarville.
Read more about this topic: Cheryl Ford
Famous quotes containing the word professional:
“Men seem more bound to the wheel of success than women do. That women are trained to get satisfaction from affiliation rather than achievement has tended to keep them from great achievement. But it has also freed them from unreasonable expectations about the satisfactions that professional achievement brings.”
—Phyllis Rose (b. 1942)
“Many young girls are ... becoming trained nurses, whose gentle ministrations in the sick-room, skilled touch, patient watchfulness and unwearied vigils, are as great factors in the care of the sick, as are the professional physicians.”
—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)
“I trust it will not be giving away professional secrets to say that many readers would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at the questions which some newspaper editors will put to a defenseless woman under the guise of flattery.”
—Kate Chopin (1851–1904)