1990 was a very good year for Vanderbilt basketball player Wendy Scholtens. She was selected to the Kodak and U.S. Basketball Writer’s All-American teams. But those were not the only honors bestowed on the player who was considered the premiere center in women’s college basketball. Scholtens was also featured in “USA Today” as one of the top five players in the U.S., was Tennessee Sports Writer’s Player of the Year, and was selected as Arkansas Player of the Decade! And why not? She was All-SEC three times, SEC Player of the Week eight times, and held an amazing nineteen Vanderbilt records, ranging from scoring to free throws.
In fact, Scholtens rivaled the greatest free-throw shooters of all time – women or men – and still holds the NCAA record for consecutive free throws made. Scholtens was named to every all-tournament team in every tournament in which she ever participated and was MVP in most of those.
Her basketball career beyond the Nashville campus is also impressive. Scholtens participated in the 1989 Olympic Festival and was on the U.S. teams playing in Czechoslovakia and Italy. She finally retired from basketball after a stint playing professionally in Japan during 1992. Wendy was inducted into the Vanderbilt Athletics Hall of Fame in 2009.
Today, Wendy Scholtens Wood is married and a lawyer living in Little Rock, but you can bet she keeps tabs on how her Commodores are faring.