We want to keep that tradition going,” she said.Įkworomadu compared the league to the NBA. We get to add our personality to the game. “Playing games professionally, it is competitive as well as entertaining. The Harlem Globetrotters have won more than 25,000 games and have been around for 89 years. “Your first time through you say, ‘Oh, this is cool.’ My second time, ‘OK, I’m getting the hang of it.” This is her second season with the Globetrotters. We have a four-point shot 35 feet away from the basket, and we perform the magic circle to showcase the best ball-handling skills,” she said.Įkworomadu said Globetrotter shows are appropriate for “people from 4 years old to 84 years old,” and that she strives to continue the values and tradition of the team in a way that demonstrates to children that it’s OK for women to compete alongside men. The shooting star is the 12th female player to play for the Harlem Globetrotters. “There’s so much excitement when it happens, but I am still a novice compared to my teammates, even though they are constantly trying to improve their craft,” she said. My flair is something called “around the world” while the ball’s spinning you take it down, a weird move, and all while I’m turning my body a lot of level changing and body rolls,” said Ekworomadu, who practiced the move over and over until she got it right. “The players were known for spinning the ball on their fingers, and they told me to be creative with it. Then we had an interview process, and they liked my personality,” said Ekworomadu. They’ve been so good with the tricks, and I was intimidated by that when I tried out they said ‘show me what you got,’ just the skills portion of it.

The Globetrotters came around, and now I get to play with all men in a male-dominated (environment) and so this translates in real time to show young women, and whoever you are, don’t separate the gender lines,” said Ekworomadu, who graduated from Texas State University in 2008.Ī little over two years ago, Ekworomadu auditioned for the Harlem Globetrotters. I always knew basketball was going to be part of the equation. Soon after she started playing organized basketball in Dallas, her hometown. She connected on a school-record 82 three-pointers her senior year and finished third in the 2008 College 3-Point Championship.”Įkworomadu (pronounced eck-wor-oh-MAA-doo) played professionally in Poland and Italy and has been a member of the Nigerian national team since 2007. Her Globetrotters official bio notes she “was the Southland Conference Player of the Year and Student Athlete of the Year in 2008, when she averaged 18.7 points per game and led the school to an opening round Women’s NIT victory. The Sentinel & Enterprise spoke with Harlem Globetrotter Joyce “Sweet J” Ekworomadu on Monday morning.

In 1971, in an unprecedented, last-minute upset, the team beat the Globetrotters 100-99. The Harlem Globetrotters, founded by Abe Saperstein in 1926, with their “trick shots and side-splitting comedy,” will match up against the infamous Washington Generals, founded by the late Red Klotz. WORCESTER - The iconic Harlem Globetrotters will pump up the DCU Center on Friday with a show families have been marveling over for decades.

Sweet j ekworomadu