Emma Dooley

Worth Coming Back For

After seven years away, a first-year collegiate player gives herself another chance.

Emma Dooley’s first basket came in a game her team lost 76–2.

She remembers the joy.

A Grade 6 redshirt who had worked her way into a jersey, Emma had contributed something meaningful to her team. The scoreboard could make the afternoon look bleak. Her memory held a reason to continue.

Basketball gave her more lessons like that. In Grade 8, she played on the junior team while friends made the senior group. Her team lost every game. Playing point guard pushed her outside her comfort zone, and her parents encouraged her to keep finding something to learn. The experience helped motivate her to try club basketball.

Making a new club in Grade 10 brought a different kind of disbelief. She walked into the gym, saw teammates she had thought were far beyond her, and checked with the coach that she was in the right place.

She was.

The coach’s belief mattered because Emma had been imagining the new group as players too good—and too cool—for her to join. The invitation gave her a fact to set beside that anxiety. Someone responsible for choosing the team wanted her there. She could begin from that, even before her own confidence had fully caught up.

Her parents helped her learn a similar approach over the years. They pushed her to see growth and capability in situations that first made her angry or discouraged. Their belief did not remove the difficult work. It helped her recognize that she was worth continuing it.

After high school, Emma stopped playing. During her kinesiology undergraduate degree, studying training principles reminded her how much basketball had shaped her—and how much she missed the opportunity to apply that learning herself.

Seven years after stepping away, she returned. Now in her first year of collegiate eligibility with the Lightning, she wants more strength in the post and the mental resilience to keep one mistake from defining the next play.

The kinesiology degree had given her training principles she wanted the chance to apply. It also made her more aware of how much she missed the discipline and physical challenge of basketball. She had skills from years of school and club play, and began to wonder what would happen if she gave herself another attempt.

“I never, ever thought I would be worthy of playing on a college basketball team,” she says.

Being here now is something she wants to choose repeatedly, through the work available each day. At 24, the first collegiate season comes with a perspective the younger Emma could not have had: the opportunity is precious partly because she knows what life feels like without it.

Faith, prayer, journalling, and good conversations keep her grounded. She also knits, cooks, reads, sings in her church choir, and plays a little piano and guitar. Her pun-making is apparently difficult to switch off.

“Showing up matters,” she says.

Emma wants to be remembered for heart: effort, encouragement, and accepting feedback day after day. Her parents helped her see possibility when anxiety obscured it. This season gives her another chance to believe them.

The girl who scored in a 76–2 loss knew a contribution could still matter. The player returning years later hasn’t forgotten.