Cardte Hicks

Cardte Hicks is a pioneer Pro Women’s League former basketball player. Reportedly having a 40-inch vertical leap, she is one of the first women known to have dunked in a professional game, doing so while playing professionally in the Netherlands in 1978.

Nicknamed “Magic”, she played basketball at San Pedro High School where she won the Los Angeles City girls’ basketball championship in 1972. She attended Long Beach State on a basketball scholarship for three years before transferring to California State University, Northridge for her senior year. During her senior season, she averaged 16.0 points in 15 games.

Following her college career, she played professionally in the Netherlands for two seasons where she gained notability in 1978 after having a two-handed alley-oop dunk. She later played two seasons in the Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL) for the San Francisco Pioneers, averaging 15.7 points in 43 games. She missed the majority of her first season, due to a stress fracture in both legs. In February 1981, she was selected to play in the WBL All-Star game. Following the folding of WBL in 1981, Hicks returned to Europe, playing until 1994, including in Italy and Sweden. In 1997, she tried out for the WNBA Sacramento Monarchs at age 41 but knee problems knocked her out.

In 2014 Carte was inducted into the San Pedro High School Athletic Hall of Fame with her brother Joe. In 2015 she received the honor again for being on the 1972 and 1973 women’s basketball teams. In 2018 Carte with the other living WBL players was inducted as “Trail Blazers of the Game” into the Women’s Basketball League Hall of Fame in Knoxville, TN.

Cardte’s love for basketball and kids founded in 1997 The Legends Kids First Inc. She is currently the CEO/President. Cardte is one of the best speakers for our youth. She speaks on many issues, including education, bullying, sportsmanship, and being a good athlete by being coachable.

“The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible” -Cardte Hicks.