I wanted to win every single game I ever played in or coached. Absolutely. I wanted to win. But, I understood that ultimately the winning or losing may not be under my control. What was under my control was how I prepared myself and our team. I judged my success, my “winning,” on that. It just made more sense.

To do that, despite the injury, I had to maintain control and dictate where I was going to go with the ball and how I was going to play. I had to, even on one ankle, keep the advantage in my court and never let the defense force me to do something I didn’t want to do. That was the key here, and that’s the key always.

I worked because I could control it.

I was very interested in coaching after playing. It’s a natural transition for players to be closely affiliated around the sport. Playing collegiate basketball makes you very relatable to your players.

Later, I began to succeed in decisive games, perhaps because I realised a very simple truth: not only was I worried, but so was my opponent.

I am a coach who likes to win despite things, not because of them.

My job is a decision-making job, and as a result, I make a lot of decisions.

Life is filled with difficult decisions, and winners are those who make them.

Making the transition from player to coach was really difficult, I’m not going to lie. There is not a lot of women coaching because when we’re done, we just want to have families. But because I have so much passion I want to stay in the game, I choose to give back to the young ladies.

Freed from the thoughts of winning, I instantly play better. I stop thinking, start feeling. My shots become a half-second quicker, my decisions become the product of instinct rather than logic.

Coaching is enjoyable and life changing. I think when you have more female coaches, the sport also changes positively. And we don’t all have to be [technical] coaches, there are so many spheres of coaching like mental, safeguarding

Freed from thoughts of winning, I instantly play better. I stop thinking, stop feeling. My shots become a half-second quicker, my decisions become the product of instinct rather than logic.

My coach has done so much for me. We spend a lot of time together, strength training, mat training. Sometimes he even stands in as a training partner for me. Most of the matches I have won, it’s not my strength but the intelligence of the coach.

Making decisions when you can vs. when you have to makes for better decisions.