Tina Webb (1966–)

Tina Webb became one of the finest women’s basketball players ever to come out of Arkansas. A high school star, she was recruited by some of the nation’s most prestigious college programs but took a two-year hiatus before entering the college ranks. Webb became a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) legend before embarking on a successful professional career overseas.

Tina Webb was born on May 18, 1966, to Charles W. Webb and Rosie Lee Crist and grew up in Bryant (Saline County). She became a cheerleader while attending Bryant Elementary School but soon shifted her focus to basketball.

Webb first came to public attention as a sophomore when she led Bryant High School to a state championship in 1982 and was named the tournament’s most valuable player (MVP). Averaging twenty-five points a game as a senior garnered her attention from the nation’s top college programs. Despite interest from basketball powerhouses like the University of Tennessee, the University of Southern California, and Louisiana Tech, as her 1984 high school graduation neared, Webb was feeling burned out and fearful of leaving home, and she seemed intent on ending her basketball career.

However, she continued to play pick-up and one-on-one basketball, often with men, in the aimless year and a half following her high school graduation. Her father eventually gave her an ultimatum: she could either go back to school or she could get a job. Not yet ready to join the workforce, she decided to go to school. University of Arkansas at Monticello (UAM) coach Alvy Early heard that Webb was interested in relaunching her career, and he offered her a scholarship.

Playing for UAM, the 5′ 11″ tall Webb offered ample evidence to support one longtime coach’s description of her as the “best woman player the state ever produced.” Over her four years at UAM, she was a four-time consensus First Team All-American (1987–1990), making Webb the only four-time First Team All-American in any sport in school history. Scoring over 1,000 points in both her junior and senior seasons, she totaled 3,412 points to rank fifth among all scorers in women’s college basketball on any level at the time, while averaging 27.1 points per game over her four-year career. She capped her career by being selected as the1990 NAIA National Player of the Year. Webb set numerous school records, including, most prominently, career, season, and game scoring records, as well as career and season rebounding. In her senior year, Webb led the team to an overall mark of 34–3 and runner-up in the NAIA tournament.

As there were few professional opportunities available to women in 1990, she went overseas, where she played professionally for almost a decade, first in Switzerland from 1990 to 1993 and then in Belgium from 1993 to 1996. She achieved much in Europe, once scoring sixty-three points in a single game and also averaging thirty-three points over the course of one season. She thoroughly enjoyed her European experience, saying that the American players lived “like royalty.” She finished her international career with a stint in Brazil from 1996 to 1998, where she played against future WNBA Player of the Year Cynthia Cooper.

In 1998, Webb returned to the United States, and while she earned a spot on the Chicago franchise of the newly founded American Basketball League, the organization failed due to the competition from the newly founded, NBA-sponsored WNBA. When Webb later tried out for the WNBA, she was put on the injured reserve list.

She had plans to join a team in Greece in 2001, but after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, upended much on the international landscape, she chose to retire. While Webb was disappointed at seeing her playing days come to an end, she said she had no regrets about what she called a “great career.”

She married her personal trainer, Sumner Jackson, in 2001.

She was inducted into the University of Arkansas at Monticello Athletics Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2007.

Tina Jackson-Webb and Sumner Jackson reside in Little Rock (Pulaski County).

For additional information:
Cross, Beck. “Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame: Cotton Blossoms Benefit from Webb’s Delay.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 16, 2007. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2007/feb/16/arkansas-sports-hall-fame-class-2007-tina-20070216/ (accessed November 20, 2024).

Keith, Sonja. “Saline County: Tina Webb.” 501 Life, March 9, 2018. https://501lifemag.com/saline-county-tina-webb/ (accessed November 20, 2024).

“Tina Webb.” Athletics Hall of Fame, University of Arkansas at Monticello. https://www.uamsports.com/honors/hall-of-fame/tina-webb/47 (accessed November 20, 2024).

William H. Pruden III
Ravenscroft School