Georgia Gayle interview: Home is where the heart is for Sheffield Hatters and GB basketball star

The granddaughter of Betty Codona, the pioneer of women’s basketball in this country and the matriarch of Sheffield Hatters until her death last spring, Gayle plays for the senior team in the WBBL, does odd jobs that contribute to the smooth running of the club, and even now coaches the Under-14s team.

“I love coaching, watching the girls train and grow,” says Gayle.

It is no surprise she is so ingrained in basketball given who her family are; grandmother Betty who started the Hatters in 1961, mother Lorraine who manages a number of teams, aunt Vanessa Ellis who is the first-team coach, and cousin Quinn - five years her junior - who plays professionally in Italy.

“I was always on the side of the court because I had to go as everybody coached,” says Gayle, 25, of her introduction into basketball.

“It came quite naturally to me. My family talked basketball 24/7 so I was constantly learning.”

Her passion for the game has not been unequivocal. There have been tough periods, usually when she released herself from the Hatters hold.

A bright academic student through her teens, she had started to drift after an unsatisfactory first year at university. She then combined playing with the Hatters with working in retail when at 20 she decided to take up the offer of a scholarship to a junior college in Florida.

Gayle spent two years at Northwest Florida State before transferring to University of Central Florida Orlando for her final year.

But her experiences in the US collegiate system should offer a salutary lesson to any promising sports person thinking of furthering their education in America.

“I don’t regret it but it was really tough,” Gayle tells The Yorkshire Post. “It was just such a culture shock. I’d gone from practising two or three times a week to twice a day.

“To them you’re just a body, they’re pumping money into you because they’re paying for your education, so they expect a lot from you.

“It’s mentally draining. When you’re training that much and they might not play you, you’re effectively busting your guts to sit on the bench.

“It does mess with your head and I struggled with my mental health because of it. When I reflect on it now I do think it made me grow as a person, it made me stronger and you do have to go through challenges in life. It’s just unfortunate I was so far away from home.”

Gayle was happier at her junior college those first two years, there were a lot of players transferring from Division 1 colleges that raised the standard, plus she lived near the beach.

But life got harder when she moved up a level to complete her studies.

“The coaches were tough,” she says of Division 1 college. “They’d be saying ‘if we lose this game our job is on the line’; they’d be like ‘you’re messing with my family’. The pressure was just unfair.

“People before I went weren’t very honest and wanted to hide their struggles, but I think now with how the world is changing, people want to talk about their struggles, it’s okay to be vulnerable.

“You hear a lot more stories of abusive coaches, of how stressful it was.”

The Covid pandemic intervened, forcing Gayle back to Sheffield where she was able to finish her degree online. But when Hatters couldn’t afford to fund a team when sport resumed, Gayle took up a pro contract in Spain.

“I’m one of these people who’s always busy, I can’t sit still, I have to be doing something, so I just bit the bullet and went to Spain to see what happens,” she says. “Again that was a challenge. I was in a top team’s development team with a lot of younger players. It took me a long time to find my game, and when I did the season was nearly over.”

Thankfully the Hatters secured enough funding to return to action for the 2021-22 season and Gayle came home. They still live a hand-to-mouth existence but from September will move into the new Park Community Arena developed by Canon Medical Systems in Attercliffe with the Sheffield Sharks.

Money is slowly coming into women’s basketball, American investors have pumped some in to London Lions and while Gayle worries it is currently skewing competition in their favour, it might just give her a future in basketball at home that she craves.

“There’s a risk moving abroad,” says Gayle, who also works three days a week as a teaching assistant.

“You don’t know what the team’s like, you don’t know what the coach is like. As I get older I don’t think I’ll want to take as many risks. I’m hoping with the arena the Hatters can start to build, money comes in and I’ll be able to coach. If I can make a living here, giving back to the younger generation, I’ll be very happy.”