LuHi’s Syla Swords: From Unranked Guard to Olympic Trailblazer
Recent LuHi Graduate, Syla Swords rounded out an already historic senior year with arguably the biggest accolade to date, a spot on the 2024 Paris Olympics Team. Swords, a member of our Girls Varsity Basketball team, has left LuHi one of the school’s most decorated student-athletes of all time.
Having attended LuHi as an unranked guard, Swords finished her high school career ranked No. 4 in the ESPN Class of 2024. She was named NYS 2024 Gatorade player of the year and was one of three LuHi Girls Basketball players named as a McDonald’s All-American, making LuHi the first team on the girls’ side to have three players named, in the same year, from the same team.
Aside from her accomplishments in a Crusader jersey, Swords, a Sudbury native, has made a name for herself on the world stage as well. On July 2, the Canadian Olympic roster was published. At that moment, it became official, Syla Swords would be Canada’s youngest ever Olympic basketball player after being named to the Paris 2024 team at the age of eighteen.
When was the last time both Canadian basketball teams were in the Olympics? The year 2000, when Syla’s father, Shawn Swords, represented Canada in the Olympics. Twenty-four years later, his eighteen-year-old daughter not only helped the women’s team qualify for the competition but will make her Olympic debut this July.
Syla will not only become the youngest Canadian named to an Olympic roster, but LuHi’s youngest and first-ever female Olympic Athlete. Syla will become the second LuHi athlete of all time and will join Bill Wennington, who was a member of the 1984 Canadian Olympic team.