Elena Delle Donne coming to Kansas City as guest speaker for 2020 WIN for KC banquet
Basketball star Elena Delle Donne will be the featured guest speaker at the 2020 WIN for KC Women’s Sports Awards Celebration in Kansas City.
An event that has only grown in popularity through the years honoring National Women and Girls in Sports Day, the annual banquet presented by Burns & McDonnell is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 7 in the Kansas City Convention Center Grand Ballroom.
Delle Donne, who plays for the Washington Mystics, is the reigning WNBA Most Valuable Player, an award she also won in 2015. She led the Mystics to the league championship this season as a six-time WNBA All-Star and four-time All-WNBA first-teamer.
But she’s really been one of the game’s best players — male or female — since her first year as a professional, when she was named the WNBA’s Rookie of the Year in 2013.
She’s the first female member of pro basketball’s prestigious “50-40-90 club” — pro players who averaged at least 50% on field goals, 40% on three-pointers and 90% on free throws for an entire regular season. The other seven members of the sharpshooters’ club are (or were) all NBA players: Larry Bird/Boston Celtics; Malcolm Brogdon/Milwaukee Bucks; Steph Curry/Golden State Warriors; Kevin Durant/Oklahoma City Thunder; Reggie Miller/Indiana Pacers; Steve Nash/Phoenix Suns; Dirk Nowitzki/Dallas Mavericks; and Mark Price/Cleveland Cavaliers.
Delle Donne earned an Olympic gold medal in 2016 with Team USA and was the WNBA’s scoring champion in 2015. A Delaware native, she was drafted second overall after starring at the University of Delaware.
Off the court, Delle Donne is the author of a series of books called “Hoops,” and released her memoir, “My Shot: Balancing it All and Standing Tall,” in 2018. She founded the Elena Delle Donne Foundation in 2017 to raise awareness of, and funds for, Lyme disease research, special needs programs and animal welfare work.
Previous WIN for KC luncheon speakers have included tennis legend Billie Jean King, the late hoops coaching icon Pat Summitt, Olympian Simone Biles and international soccer star Abby Wambach, to name just a few.
This year’s banquet will honor a variety of KC community sports figures of all ages, and will be emceed by KCTV5 sports anchor Dani Welniak starting at 10:30 a.m. WIN for KC stands for Women’s Intersport Network for Kansas City.