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Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham opened up about her personality in a team video released after she posted her first double-double of the season Friday.
After the Fever’s 99-82 win over the Atlanta Dream, in which Cunningham had 16 points and 10 rebounds, the team published a video feature on social media with Cunningham speaking candidly about who she is.
“I bring the energy. I bring the feistiness. I’m a little bit sassy,” Cunningham said.
“I’m just the ultimate competitor. I will outwork anyone, and I think that’s something I can hang my hat on and my teammates can always expect from me.”
Cunningham’s admission comes amid her rise to stardom after she started a fight to defend teammate Caitlin Clark.
In a June 17 game against the Connecticut Sun, Cunningham committed a hard foul on Connecticut Sun guard Jacy Sheldon.
Cunningham and Sheldon’s heated exchange turned into a shoving match before players from both teams intervened to break it up. Cunningham, Sheldon and Sun guard Lindsay Allen were ejected from the game with about 40 seconds left before the Fever took home the victory.
The hard foul came after Sheldon poked Clark in the eye in the third quarter. Sun guard Marina Mabrey then shoved Clark to the floor during a game that got chippy.
As the Fever put away the Sun, 88-71, Cunningham was congratulated for stepping up as the team’s enforcer.
Cunningham saw a surge in popularity after the game. Her Instagram and TikTok accounts each surged past 1 million followers.
With Cunningham earning the nickname “the enforcer” for the Fever, fans counting on her to protect Caitlin Clark can rest easy knowing she is a black belt in the Korean martial art of taekwondo.
She earned the black belt at the age of 6.
Her father Jim played football at the University of Missouri, and she followed in her dad’s footsteps on the football field.
A 2014 article by the Columbia Missourian reported Cunningham was the first female in history to score points for the team when she kicked two of four extra points in place of the team’s regular kicker, who had torn an ACL.
Cunningham even handled kickoff duties.
“I was so nervous,” Cunningham told the outlet. “I mean, I’ve never played football before in all my life. Right when I got the ball (on the opening kickoff), I couldn’t hear anything. I just put the ball down and kicked it.”
Cunningham comes from a family of farmers and credits that upbringing for the person she is today, according to a five-part feature series by the University of Missouri.
“So much of our success goes back to what we learned here,” Cunningham said of working on the farm. “We loved coming out to the farm to help. We found out how to work hard and work together. It made us farm strong.”
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