University of Dayton Athletics

Crusoe graduated Dunbar High School in 1975. She decided to stay in her hometown and she attended the University of Dayton. In her years at UD, she played basketball. She was known for being a tremendous defensive player. She was a two time All American in 1978-79 and 1979-80. She was the MVP in the OAISW Tournament and the Lady Invitational. She was also honored when she was picked for all tournament team at nationals. She reached 1,000 points in her career just after two full seasons on the squad. She is among the top ten in may categorizes in Dayton’s all time list. Her most impressive statistics is the fact she averaged 4.49 steals per game while everyone else’s is lower than 2.0 and she leads with 428 all time steals. 

Crusoe graduated the University and went to the WBL. She played for one season in the Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL) before it was disintegrated. She originally played for San Francisco ('80-81), but was later traded to the New Orleans Pride ('80-81). However, her trade was not common. There was talk that her trade was due to racial discrimination, but nothing was ever established. The team needed to cut coast and shipped out two players that just so happened to both be African American players. The newspapers hinted that this was in fact due to racial discrimination, however the likeness of that seemed unlikely when both teammates and coaches said how much of an asset Crusoe was. Crusoe’s coach, Van Breda Kolff approved one trade, but wanted to keep Crusoe. He stated that Crusoe reminded him of Magic Johnson during training camp. He went on to say that those two were “the kind of player(s) who when made by God were meant to play basketball.”

However, after all was said and done she was traded and looking for a new start in New Orleans. After the WBL fell through she played professional basketball in South America. She played form the Brazilian team as well as the Chile team.