Having been a state, national and Olympic champion, Venus Lacy knows how to win.
Now, at 55, her basketball legend long since built and burnished, she's getting the upper hand on a new foe - one more fearsome than any she faced on the court.
"I've had my demons come in," she said, her voice surprisingly soft for one who stands 6 feet, 4 inches. "I've had my battles in life.
"Life is not easy. But I'm not going to let anything stop me. I am taking my life back."
Nearly four decades have passed since Lacy led Brainerd to a TSSAA state title in 1984. Her coach, Carolyn Jackson, said Lacy was "one of the best to ever play for me" - high praise, given that Jackson had racked up more than 900 wins by the time she retired a decade ago.
Lacy signed to play college ball at Old Dominion, then a perennial power in the women's game, but left after a year for another juggernaut, Louisiana Tech. With Lacy in the post, the Lady Techsters made three straight Final Fours and won a national championship in 1988. More than 30 years later, Lacy is still the No. 4 all-time scorer in program history and enshrined in both the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and the Louisiana Tech Athletic Hall of Fame.
But when she finished her collegiate career, the launch of the WNBA was still several years away. For women at that time, turning pro meant heading for leagues on the other side of the world. Lacy recalls spending the years immediately after her run at Louisiana Tech competing in Italy, Spain, France, Japan and Russia, among other countries.
Lacy was nearly 30 when she was tapped for the team that would represent the United States in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Tara VanDerveer, the legendary Stanford coach who took a year away from that job to guide the U.S. women's squad, said Lacy came to the team late but was a "great addition."
"I felt we had all the pieces on that team except that go-to 'Big Mama,'" VanDerveer said. "Venus was the perfect fit - a tremendous low-block player, and very physical. It didn't matter who we were playing - the Russians, whoever - she was afraid of no one.
"She was also a very loyal teammate. Worked hard, played really hard, very easy to get along with on and off the floor."
That U.S. team won Olympic gold, capping an 8-0 run by defeating Brazil 111-87 in the final. Lacy averaged seven points and four rebounds per game and shot 65% from the floor.
"I loved having Venus on that team," VanDerveer said. "I have nothing but the absolute greatest respect for and fond memories of her."
Remarkable though they were, those triumphs in Lacy's life live alongside her memories of tragedy, crisis and abuse that she said began in her childhood. Jackson recalled Lacy was usually "jovial" and never tipped what was happening at home.
"She just made it seem like she didn't have any problems," the former Brainerd coach said.
The reality, Lacy said, was that she spent too much time at home "huddled with my sisters and our mom in a closet. We came to think that was normal."
There was the 1997 automobile accident in Ruston, Louisiana, that resulted in a concussion, seizures and memory loss - "I didn't know my family," she said. Lacy recovered well enough to finish her Louisiana Tech undergraduate degree in 1999, but she was diagnosed with mental illness in the mid-2000s. A few years later came the death of her mother and a life-threatening case of pneumonia.
"They called my family and said they needed to come because I wasn't going to make it," Lacy recalled.
And then there were the men. A common thread running through Lacy's adult life is relationships with men she said abused her - including one who threatened to kill her.
"There's nothing fun about loving someone who's hurting you," she said. "I guess I just attracted the wrong people."
Lacy said she went to California in 2019 for a basketball coaching job but returned to Chattanooga two years later because she "wanted to come back home, to my son," Alex, a 2021 Red Bank High School graduate who's now a freshman at the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Kentucky. He plays football for the Patriots, who compete in the NAIA's Mid-South Conference.
"He's nothing like me," Lacy said. "He's outgoing and I'm not. He'll talk or sing in front of people.
"He's the joy of my life - the best thing that ever happened to me."
She admitted she was struggling when she returned from California, but Lacy finally determined to change who she was.
"People had tried to take my strength, my dignity," she said. "They wanted me to be afraid, but I didn't want to hide anymore.
"I was always a pleaser, but I'm about pleasing me now."
Lacy said she went about the business of severing relationships, some within her family, that were unhealthy. The result is that she feels "so much freer."
"It was hard, but the only way to get better was to put away" bad relationships, she said. "I can't be around anything negative. I stay around people I can give joy to.
"And I had to believe in God. I had to step out in faith."
Lacy said today she's part of a "wonderful" faith community. She said she's done some work for ESPN and hopes to do more.
"I think my life is turning for the better. I'm planning on doing things, and I'm not going to change me anymore," she said, adding that people can "accept me for who I am, or not at all."
And, she said, that includes anyone who might be interested in dating.
"I don't want to be alone," Lacy said. "If I meet someone, I meet someone, but I know I'm a good person. I'm going to love myself.
"As long as I keep that belief, and my faith, there's nothing I can't conquer now."
Contact Bob Gary at sports@timesfreepress.com.