Going into 2012

The Lennox Foundation 22 was founded by WNBA Guard #22 Betty Lennox to support kids in all communities that battle with the horrors of neglect and abuse.  The money raised by The Lennox Foundation 22 will assist different shelters and homes to enrich their programs and educational needs for their communities.

"I was raised in a tough household -- very poor -- and fought for everything that I got. I was raised to not take anything lightly. That's why I'm appreciative of everything I have now."

Betty Bernice Lennox was born in Hugo, Oklahoma, population 5,500, on December 4, 1976.  She is the eighth of nine children.  She had five older brothers who spent a good deal of time playing basketball when they weren't working hard on the farm.

Lennox said she started loading bales when she was 10. A bale weighs 30 to 40 pounds. Hurl 20 of them onto a truck, and an entire 80 cents was yours. Toss a few thousand from sunrise to sundown and that four cents per bale actually turned into paper money.

"But I didn't get that money," she said. "That was money that put food on our table. We'd always ask my mom when we were going to get paid and she always said, 'When you sit down and eat supper, that's your paycheck.'

Three things happened in that sweltering sun. Lennox learned about the hardest sort of hard labor. She also became competitive, constantly trying to prove that her small size didn't mean she couldn't do anything her burly brothers or anyone else could.

It also made her hard and feisty.  That intensity and drive can still be seen today.

"My brothers taught me: Don't be scared of anything," Lennox told the Kansas City Star. "I go into games and don't get intimidated by anyone. I'm not afraid of anything,except the Man upstairs."

Lennox continues to take that philosophy with her onto the courts of the WNBA.  In professional basketball it is often the imposing, aggressive, high-scoring centers and forwards who grab the limelight, but Betty has been an exception to that rule.  Standing at only five feet, six inches tall (although she's officially listed as 5'8"), Lennox's career has been marked by sheer determination.  Betty "B-Money" (nicknamed because she was shooting nearly 50 percent from the field) Lennox has become one of the WNBA's brightest young stars.