By MANNY NAVARRO
mnavarro@MiamiHerald.com

When Miguel Diaz, cofounder of the Miami Suns AAU girls' basketball program, first met Sylvia Fowles nine years ago, he already knew what a big-time basketball player she was. What he has learned over the years is her heart might be even bigger.

"When Sylvia first came to our team, she was already one of the most highly recruited players in the country," Diaz said Tuesday. "She was only 16, 17 years old, but she already knew what the attention she was getting would mean not only for her, but also for her teammates.

"Even though she pretty much knew she wanted to go to LSU, she made sure not to tell anyone or make any commitments because she wanted coaches to keep coming out to recruit her and to keep coming out to watch her teammates play. We had 32 girls in our program when she was here. All of them went to college.

"She has a huge heart. And even though she's living all over the world now, she's never stopped loving this city or representing it."

Fowles, who turns 25 in October, has grown up since she became the first girl in the state to dunk in a high school basketball game nearly a decade ago. She has grown from a tall, quiet, athletic freshman at Miami Edison to the Southeastern Conference Player of the Year at LSU and a gold-medal winning Olympian in Beijing two years ago.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/27/1749471/fowles-a-global-power-with-strong.html