Sally Phillips – What happens when the thing you’re good at isn’t the thing you love anymore? 🏀✨

Gosh, that's huge.

I hadn't realized how much you've done.

I know we touched on it when we spoke initially, but what an incredible journey.

And just to even be at such a, still, as you say, a very young age.

And a lot of people, that's when you're sort of that mid-20s, sort of 27, did you say you were? That's when you're almost now starting life as well, and particularly sort of like now.

So I know

you

said there was injury and everything, but

Was there also a particular moment when you realised you needed something different as well? Because when you sort of, as you, in your words, sort of fell out of love with basketball, was it something telling you that you needed something different?

Yeah, I think so.

I feel like when I reflect on basketball, I remember it as being a real grind.

And it's hard to talk about it sometimes because sometimes I often go, gosh, do I sound like I'm being a little bit of a, you know, whinger when I talk about the hard yards that female athletes went through back in that day.

But, you know, when I was playing, I was still having to try and work full time, train early mornings, work all day, back in the car, back out to training.

Yeah, yeah.

Like it was a hard slog and, you know, there were athletes that, made that work and did really well.

But for some reason, I just didn't feel comfortable in what was that, you know, felt like what life was being a real grind.

And I often think back and kind of reflect on, like, I just kept having these moments of Sal, you're just going to have to move on to that next phase of your life.

I almost feel like I had a craving for normality and I don't know whether that's because I kind of hit the elite pathways at such an early age.

I don't know.

I guess everyone experiences burnout at different times and different stages, but Yeah, I definitely kind of feel like maybe just burnout hit me a bit earlier than it does others.

And yeah, there was that curious side of me that was like, okay, well, yeah, what comes next? But I had responsibilities too, you know, flagging earlier that, you know, I had a house now and was married and I had two dogs at home and, you know, all those, you know, pre-kids and you've got your fur babies.

Yeah.

Yeah, there were just lots of little parts of life that I think I, I don't know, I just felt a real draw to try and jump into that next phase.

And look, I like to call it, and a lot of people call them chapters, you know, we have our own book and it's all made of lots of different chapters and that was clearly a chapter going into a new chapter for you.

What did you go on to do after that then once you kind of left the basketball space?