Life as a Falcon
Before vaulting into fame as a professional basketball player, Katie Douglas once roamed the these halls like the rest of us mortals. Being a Lady Falcon allowed her to be the student athlete she wanted to be.

“I was just hungry,” she says about her high school years. “I knew what I wanted. I knew that I was really driven and really focused and worked hard and set a lot of goals.”
Douglas graduated in 1997, representing the school as an Indiana All-Star and had a major impact on girls basketball at Perry.

College Career

After graduating from Perry, she attended Purdue University, where she helped the basketball team win the NCAA Women’s Division I Basketball championship in 1999. She was also named to the 1999 and 2001 NCAA Women’s Final Four All-Tournament Teams. 

In 2001, she was named the Big Ten Player of the Year and won the Silver Basketball, an award given by the Chicago Tribune to the MVP of the Big Ten Conference. 

Her biggest collegiate award, was the Suzy Favor Award, \given to the best female athlete in the Big Ten Conference across all sports. She graduated in 2001 with a communications degree. 

Professional Basketball 

Douglas didn’t plan on playing professional basketball. Her main focus had just been to play at the collegiate level.

“I didn’t know about the professional game because that [goal] hadn’t been developed or created,” she admits.

 Even so, she began her professional basketball career in the WNBA with the Connecticut Sun, having a  breakout year in 2006, averaging 16.4 points per game and being voted to the WNBA All-Star team, where she was the game’s MVP.

That same year, she was named to the WNBA All-Defensive First Team.

Eventually, in 2008, she was traded to the Indiana Fever, where in 2009 she had the best season of her career, becoming the first player in the organization to have back-to-back games with more than 30 points. She went on to win her first WNBA Championship with the team in 2012, and on May 1, 2015, Douglas announced her retirement after a 14 season-long career.

Legacy

Katie Douglas left a lasting impact at every stage in her life. 

The Connecticut Sun retired her number 23 jersey and, most recently,her  number was retired at Perry Meridian. 

It was a full-circle moment for Douglas, coming back to the place where her basketball career began, and now expecting a child. 

Although she’s experienced immense success, she offers simple advice to those looking to follow in her footsteps.

“No matter athletic or not, just stay focused, stay driven, work hard,” she says. “Set goals. Not only long term goals, but short term goals were also really important to me.”

A lifetime of those short term goals has made Douglas a role model for many Falcons and has secured her legacy in the halls of Perry Meridian.