Molly Bolin

"Machine Gun" Molly Bolin (born Monna Lea Van Venthuysen November 13, 1957) is a retired American basketball player who mainly played for the Women's Professional Basketball League. Although her accomplishments for the most part went unrecognized, Bolin, who was the first player signed to play in the WBL, became a pioneering figure in women's basketball, both as a formidable scoring threat and as a sex symbol of the league. Among her accolades, Bolin holds the record for most points scored in a single game by any professional women's basketball player (55) and the highest single-season scoring average (32.8).

Bolin was born in Dryden, Ontario, but was raised in Moravia, Iowa, where she first began playing basketball for Moravia High School's Mohawks during her junior year. In unconventional six-player half-court gameplay, Bolin averaged 50 points in her first year and 54.8 points in her senior year, while setting the school's single-game record for most points by one player (83). Among other early accolades, Bolin was selected to participate in tryouts for 1976 Summer Olympics' women's basketball team at 17 years-old and was voted an All-American in her senior year.

In 1975, Bolin began attending Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa where she had to adjust to the conventional five-player style of play with the Vikings basketball team. As she recollected, "College wasn't the same experience as high school and I had to learn the five-on-five full-court game pretty quickly. In fact, right out of high school in 1975, I got recruited to tryout for the '75 Pan American team and I couldn't even dribble full-court and make a basket". Instead of playing her sophomore year, Bolin decided to sit out to marry Dennis Bolin and give birth to the couple's child, Damien, in 1977. When Bolin returned to the court in 1978, she set university scoring records, averaging 24.6 PPG, and graduated with an associate's degree in telecommunications.

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