Laura Souza '22 Recruiting Profile

I've been doing sports my whole life. I love the energy, the pressure, and the feeling of competition, it just keeps me alive. I was introduced to basketball in middle school. There I found my passion for the game and decided to play professionally. Then I entered the federation of my state and was trained by the Brazilian team coach who shown to me a whole different perspective of basketball, and pushed me to my limit, so I could see how big I could be. After that year, some personal things discouraged me and I returned to playing at my school. Then the pandemic happened and I saw my dream going away. In these last 6 months of 2022, I saw an opportunity, to come back and show what I'm capable of. So I trained hard, when there wasn't practice at school, I practiced at home,  went to the gym, and had an explosion of evolution, which kept me thinking, if in 6 months I've turned into this, imagine where I could go. My team won every single game that I played, I won the trophy of the best player in the league, and besides all these championships that we won, I learned so much.
All things apart, usual of the basketball game, what really matters is when you’re in the heat of the moment, what do you look like? Basketball does not build character, basketball reveals. It’s an intimate sport. You can see the emotion on everybody’s face at all times. Everybody tends to erupt when things are not going as you expect. The dynamics of the basketball playground are crazy. You are being elbowed, and tripped, hearing the cheers in the court trying to destabilize you. It’s not about just playing with a ball, that’s the easy part. The hard part is to keep your feet on the ground, and not let your emotions arise. And understanding that, means you can work on that, and my whole life I'm trying to figure this out.
There’s a difference between a common basketball player and a player that chases victory. The common player will play by the rules and do his part, that one player, the hunter, will seek victory, endlessly and tirelessly, that one player will give his life on that chance, on every single play, the game is only over when the judge blows the whistle. Until that moment, it isn't over. And I am that player that will never give up until it's over.