Women Get Chance to Show Stuff

Yes, women do dunk.

Five American Basketball League players will try to demonstrate that today, in the preliminaries of what the ABL says is the first all-woman dunk contest.

It’s a prelude to Sunday’s ABL All-Star game at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex arena, and the finals of the contest will be held at halftime.

Also today are the preliminaries of a three-point shootout, matching 12 ABL players.

The dunk contestants:

* Kara Wolters (6 feet 7), New England Blizzard.

* Sylvia Crawley (6-5), Colorado Xplosion.

* Katryna Gaither (6-3), San Jose Lasers.

* Linda Godby (6-6), Seattle Reign.

* Sheila Frost (6-4), Portland Power.

The favorite is Crawley, who dunks routinely in pregame warmups, and has even been seen throwing down reverse dunks.

It’s believed 10 to 12 players in the ABL can dunk, although no one has dunked in an ABL or WNBA game.

Yolanda Griffith of the Long Beach StingRays was asked to compete, but declined.

“I tried to dunk in a game in Germany two years ago, my hand got hung up on the rim and I ripped off half my palm,” she said.

San Jose’s Charlotte Smith was an entrant but pulled out last week after she injured a hamstring. Smith and Crawley were teammates at North Carolina, where crowds arrived early to watch them dunk back-to-back in pregame drills.

Judges will grade each of three dunks by Saturday’s contestants on a 1.0 to 10.0 scale. Each finalist will be given two dunk attempts.

Three-point shooters are Jennifer Azzi and Sheri Sam (San Jose), Cathy Boswell (Atlanta), Shalonda Enis and Kate Starbird (Seattle), Molly Goodenbour (Portland), Niesa Johnson (Long Beach), Carolyn Jones (New England), Beth Morgan and Dawn Staley (Philadelphia), Crystal Robinson (Colorado), Katie Smith (Columbus).

The winner of each contest receives $5,000.