Kara Wolters

Kara Wolters was a US basketball player, who played the 5 position at 201 cm (6-7) tall. She is one of the 12 women (through 2023) to have won the “Grand Slam” of basketball honors, winning Olympic gold in 2000 at Sydney, an NCAA title in 1995 at the University of Connecticut, a FIBA World Cup title in 1998, and the WNBA Championship, and in 1999 with the Houston Comets. With TeamUSA she also won gold medals at the 1997 World University Games and the 1996 Jones Cup.

Wolters came from an athletic family as her father was a 1967 NBA Draft choice of the Seattle SuperSonics, her maternal grandfather played minor league baseball, her brother played in college at Assumption and Eastern Connecticut State, and a sister played college basketball at the University of Rhode Island.

While playing at Connecticut Wolters was the NCAA Player of the Year in 1997 and led them to an undefeated season and the NCAA title in 1995. At the end of her career she was U Conn’s all-time leading rebounder and shot blocker.

In 1999 Wolters was a third-round pick of the Houston Comets in the WNBA Draft. She had played in 1997-98 with the New England Blizzard of the defunct American Basketball League, after they chose her as the third pick of the 1997 ABL Draft. Wolters played one season with the Comets in the WNBA, helping them win the league title, and then moved to the Indiana Fever in 2000. In 2001-02 she played for the Sacramento Monarchs and then ended her playing career.

Wolters went into broadcasting, serving as a color commentator for women’s basketball on local television stations. She has also run the Kara Wolters Dream Big Basketball Camp in Connecticut. Wolters’ older sister, Kara, died from a brain tumor in 2004, and Wolters established the Kara Kares Foundation in 1998 supporting brain cancer research.

In 2017 Wolters was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. She was made one of the Huskies of Honor at the University of Connecticut in 2006.