Millicent Patterson

The Hoop Down the Street

An Airdrie athlete turns a lockdown discovery into a collegiate opportunity.

Millicent Patterson’s basketball story began on a neighbour’s run-down hoop.

COVID had interrupted competitive soccer and Highland dancing. She needed something active to do. Basketball became the thing she couldn’t stop doing.

Then her dad found an old hoop for sale down the street and brought it home. The hours of shooting acquired a more convenient address.

In Grade 9, her older sister convinced her to try out for the school team. Millicent doubted she’d make it past the second tryout. Instead, she became a junior varsity starter, began club basketball, and earned a place on an AAU circuit team.

At a tournament, watching two older friends compete gave her a clear picture of the level she wanted to reach. The following year, she became a senior varsity starter. The sport that had helped occupy lockdown was becoming a serious pursuit.

Those friends now play Division I basketball in the United States and remain sources of inspiration. The example mattered because they were people she knew, rather than possibilities viewed only on television. Seeing them compete made a higher level easier to imagine as something a person from her own life could reach.

Her sister had already helped her cross an earlier threshold: agreeing to try out. Millicent expected she might not survive the second stage. Making the team, then starting, gave her evidence that her prediction about herself was not always reliable. She has kept returning to that lesson when doubt becomes louder than the work she has done.

Now entering her first year of eligibility with the Lightning, Millicent wants more confidence, stronger skills, and a contribution to a championship team.

Self-doubt has been her toughest opponent. Other people’s criticism sometimes made her question whether to continue. Her family and teammates helped her return to a more dependable answer: basketball gives her joy, balance, and a place where she feels herself.

“Playing for the part of me that didn’t think I would get here,” she says, describing one of her motivations.

That is a distinctive reason to keep going. She can work for the future player she wants to become while also giving the earlier, uncertain version of herself something to believe in. The university opportunity says she has already come further than that version expected. The new season says there is more she can learn.

Basketball remains a place where she feels like herself, even when other parts of life are difficult. Her family helps her protect that connection: belief from her mom, effort and attitude modelled by her dad, her sister’s presence through the challenges. Confidence does not always arrive alone. Sometimes it begins with borrowing the belief of people who know you.

Her mom offers belief, her dad an example of effort and attitude, and her sister the same steady support that helped her walk into that first tryout.

She wants younger athletes to trust the process without forgetting why they started.

There was a time she didn’t expect to make a school team. Now she has a university season ahead. The old hoop was a beginning. The work she chose to do around it made the difference.