Grand Marshal /
Sports Celebrity
2022 Grand Marshal and Sports Celebrity
Vicky Bullett
Olympic Gold Medalist and Martinsburg native Vicky Bullett has been named the 2022 Mountain State Apple Harvest Festival Grand Marshal and Sports Celebrity for the 43rd festival in October.
“It is fitting that the board has selected Vicky Bullett as our Grand Marshal and Sports Celebrity for our 43rd Mountain State Apple Harvest Festival, as we are celebrating 250 years of apple harvest heritage,” Board President Susan Snowden said. “Vicky is not only a highly decorated athlete with all that she has accomplished in her basketball career, but she is considered a home-town hero for her commitment to the youth whom she has dedicated her life to inspiring and leading.”
Considered one of West Virginia’s most decorated athletes, Bullett is a basketball legend whose career spanned the globe, from playing in the WNBA and on European and South American professional teams, as a member of the U.S. Olympic team and USA National team, to the University of Maryland and in the early years as a Martinsburg High School Bulldog.
Bullett and the rest of the U.S. Olympic team were gold medalists in 1988, USA National World Champions in 1990 and Olympic bronze medalists in 1992. She was the youngest member of the 1988 team in Seoul, South Korea, at just 20 years old. She also played on the junior national USA Select team, and on the U.S. team at the 1990 Goodwill Games.
Bullett is still regarded as one of the University of Maryland’s best athletes in its women’s basketball history. During her career, she averaged 16.9 points and 8.5 rebounds per game and set a slew of records. She helped lead the Terrapins to three ACC titles and one NCAA Final Four. She made first team three of her four years, was named ACC Tournament MVP, ACC Player of the Year, and a Kodak All-American. The university has since retired her jersey (#23) and honored her with a spot in its Athletics Walk of Fame. Bullett was also honored by the ACC in being named to the Women’s Basketball 50th Anniversary team and later, selected as an ACC Women’s Basketball Legend.
Throughout the 1990s, Bullett was a popular player on professional teams in Italy and Brazil. In 1997 Bullett joined the Charlotte Sting of the WNBA, leading them to the play-offs for three consecutive years. In 2000 she was traded to the Washington Mystics, where she played an additional three seasons, starting all 96 games and racking up accomplishments one after the other. She retired from the WNBA in 2002 but continued to play overseas through 2007.
As her professional career wound down, Bullett’s coaching career took off with stints in the WNBA, colleges and local schools. In 2009, she was an assistant with the Mystics and went on to be named their manager of basketball operations. Later she coached at Hagerstown Community College in Maryland and soon after, became head coach at West Virginia Wesleyan for the woman’s basketball team.
Bullett was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011. And the Washington Mystics recently selected her as a member of the their Inaugural Hall of Fame Class in June. The street where she grew up in Martinsburg was renamed “Vicky Bullett Street” in her honor.
Currently, Bullet is serving as director of athletics, community outreach for Boys and Girls Clubs of the Eastern Panhandle where her early basketball career as a child began. She resides with her husband Tom in Martinsburg.
Bullet will be in attendance at all of the Mountain State Apple Harvest Festival main events in October, including serving as the Grand Marshal at of the 43rd MSAHF Grand Feature Parade. Come out and visit her and get her autograph!
We can’t wait to honor this home-town hero, as we celebrate 250 years of apple harvest heritage.
