A guard from Columbia
who never really left

A Missouri household

She grew up in a family for whom the University of Missouri was not an abstraction. Her father, Jim, played football for Missouri and her mother, Paula, competed there in track and field; her older sister Lindsey played basketball for the same programme, and for two seasons they were team-mates. Away from all of it there was a farm about thirty miles east of Columbia, kept by her grandparents, which she has described as her escape from the sport.

She played her high school basketball at Rock Bridge, in Columbia, and won four straight state titles there before being named a McDonald's All-American in 2015. The next step was the university in the same city. The full route from Columbia to the WNBA follows what staying home meant before the professional move. More on her family.

The sports before basketball: soccer, volleyball, taekwondo and football

Basketball was not the only sport she played, and for a while it was not obviously the one she would keep. Her hometown newspaper, writing the week she went to the McDonald's All-American Game in 2015, listed the years behind her as soccer, volleyball, softball, swimming and taekwondo, alongside basketball. Reporting on her childhood describes her as a taekwondo black belt at the age of six; how long she trained is not documented. Missouri's own feature series on her described soccer, volleyball and basketball as the three she and her sister Lindsey excelled at, and noted that she played up with Lindsey's older age group as a five-year-old.

Volleyball was the one that ran closest to basketball. She played it at Rock Bridge for three years, and has said since that deciding between the two was genuinely hard — she described being good at both and choosing basketball partly for its physicality. That is her own account, given on a podcast in 2024; no independent record of how far she could have gone in volleyball exists, and none is claimed here.

The most unusual entry came in the autumn of 2014, her senior year. Rock Bridge's kicker tore an anterior cruciate ligament in late September, and Cunningham — who had made a long field goal in a halftime kicking contest earlier that season, reported at 45 yards by one Columbia paper and 25 by the other — completed the practices the state required and took the job. She kicked from October through the Class 6 playoff run, converting two extra points in all, and became the first female athlete to score for the school's varsity football team.

Beyond that, the record is thin on purpose: no competitive level, position or statistic from her soccer, softball or swimming years has been documented, so none is given. Her parents' and sister's sports were theirs, not hers — Jim played football at Missouri, Paula competed in track and field there, Lindsey played basketball — and none of that is evidence of what Sophie played.

Four years in Columbia

She started for Missouri from her first season, scoring a school-record 42 points against Wake Forest in her fourth college game, and was SEC Freshman of the Year. Missouri records her as a three-time All-SEC First Team selection; Sports Reference lists four All-SEC honours. In 2019 she became the programme's first All-America, on the AP and USBWA third teams. Over 129 games she averaged 17 points, 5.4 rebounds and 3 assists.

The number she is remembered for arrived on 9 March 2019: 33 points against Mississippi State in the SEC Tournament semifinal, which took her past Joni Davis's programme record of 2,126 points. She finished with 2,187. What the totals do not carry is the role she had grown into by then — physical, loud, and almost always available — and that reputation, more than the scoring, is what followed her into the professional game. The Missouri years go through that period properly.

Six seasons in Phoenix

The Phoenix Mercury took her thirteenth overall in the second round of the 2019 draft. Nothing about the six seasons that followed was sudden. She was a rookie playing twelve minutes a night, then a shooter who had to prove the shot, and only in 2022 — starting twenty games, averaging 12.6 points — a front-line contributor. In 2023 she started every game she played.

She left Phoenix in February 2025 after 182 games for the franchise. Six seasons in the desert.

Indianapolis

On 2 February 2025 a multi-team deal sent her to the Indiana Fever, and the role changed again: fewer shots, but a higher three-point percentage. She shot 43.2% from three across thirty games, won the Commissioner's Cup with the team, and was then ruled out for the rest of the season in August. Indiana played its post-season without her. In April 2025 Mizzou had announced her for its athletics Hall of Fame, and on 12 September 2025 she was inducted at Mizzou Arena.

She re-signed with Indiana for 2026 on a one-year contract — an outcome she said on her own podcast she had found frustrating, having wanted longer-term stability. She missed one game in June with a right-elbow problem and was back two days later.

2026: a studio desk, a podcast and Sports Illustrated

She took on work away from the court that year. She joined USA Network's WNBA studio coverage as an athlete contributor from April, kept co-hosting the podcast Show Me Something with West Wilson, and made a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit debut in the 2026 issue.

The 2026 season was her eighth in the WNBA and second with Indiana. She played off the bench for a team that clinched a playoff place on 22 August; the regular season ended on 24 September and the playoffs began on 27 September.