March 28, 2024, 07:12:44 PM

Author Topic: Gillian Goring drafted in WNBA round 3  (Read 3853 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline real madness

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 2226
    • View Profile
Gillian Goring drafted in WNBA round 3
« on: April 04, 2007, 03:22:35 PM »
2007 WNBA DRAFT, ROUND 3

PICK TEAM SELECTION
27 Chicago Sky  Jenna Rubino, F, DePaul
28 Phoenix Mercury  Leah Rush, F, Oklahoma
29 New York Liberty Martina Webber, C, Iona
30 San Antonio Silver Stars  Nare Diawara, C, Virginia Tech
31 Phoenix Mercury Chrissy Givens, G, Middle Tennessee St.
32 Washington Mystics  Gillian Goring, C, N.C. State
33 Seattle Storm Brandie Hoskins, G, Ohio State
34 Houston Comets  Kristen Newlin, C, Stanford
35 Indiana Fever  Ashley Key, G, N.C. State
36 Sacramento Monarchs  Meg Bulger, F, West Virginia
37 Phoenix Mercury Emily Westerberg, F, Arizona State
38 Los Angeles Sparks Amanda Brown, C, Penn State
39 Connecticut Sun Kiera Hardy, G, Nebraska

Offline real madness

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 2226
    • View Profile
Re: Gillian Goring drafted in WNBA round 3
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2007, 03:29:33 PM »
2002 article

Introducing:
Gillian Goring

A hero in the country of Trinidad, Gillian Goring is become well-known in the U.S, too.


When you're 6-7, it's hard to escape notice, even if you're a female basketball player. But Gillian Goring has the game to back up the attention she's received since she moved to the United States from her native Trinidad as an exchange student three years ago.

In Trinidad, Goring wasn't allowed to play basketball with girls her age and grew up competing against older boys until age 13, when she began playing with Trinidad's under-19 women's basketball team. She also played for a men's club team.

At age 14, Goring was named Trinidad's sports woman of the year. She also served as a junior ambassador for her country, joining Trinidad's president on trips to Great Britain, Scotland, and the U.S. "I had to stand before these audiences that included presidents and prime ministers and talk about my country," she told USA Today earlier this year. "I was scared to death."

Goring's height runs in her family -- her mother is 6-3 and her dad is 7-0 -- so it's possible that she's still growing. But she's not worrying about her height, as she's more focused on improving the nuances of her game. Since coming to the U.S. she's worked hard to develop her rebounding, passing, and ball-handling skills to complement her obvious shot-blocking abilities.

In her second (junior) season at Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, Pa., Goring averaged 16 points, 11 rebounds, and 3.6 blocks per game while leading the team to a 25-2 record. She racked up a host of honors, including being named to Parade and USA Today's All-America Second Teams and Street & Smith's First Team. Goring also play AAU ball for the Philadelphia Belles, and has attended the Nike All-American Camp the past two years. 

This summer, Goring decided to change high schools, transferring to West High School in Waterloo, Iowa. (Nina Smith, the nation's top recruit in 1999, also went there.) Goring indicated the decision was for academic reasons: she would require two years to graduate at Germantown Academy and expects to graduate in one year at Waterloo. However, she won't be eligible to play for West until mid-January, meaning she could miss more than half of the regular-season games.

"We are confident that Gillian is making a good choice for her future," Germantown Academy athletic director Jim Fenerty said in a statement published by the Philadelphia Inquirer, "and that she is moving on to an excellent school and a first-rate basketball program. If we felt otherwise, we would advise Gillian to reconsider."

Goring hasn't decided on a college yet, but she's weighing offers from a few of the many colleges that are pursuing her, including Connecticut, Tennessee, Rutgers, Iowa, Notre Dame and Penn State. Connecticut is reportedly her first choice.


2007 article
A long, strange trip
N.C. State's Gillian Goring is finally living up to billing
Posted: Wednesday February 14, 2007 11:33AM; Updated: Wednesday February 14, 2007 4:06PM
   

 
Gillian Goring has formed a fabulous relationship with N.C. State coach Kay Yow.

 
 
Five years ago Gillian Goring was one of the most sought-after women's basketball recruits in the country. A 6-foot-7 center with rare agility and an array of post moves, she could run the floor, shoot the three and catch any pass that came anywhere close to her. Some compared her to Lisa Leslie or Dikembe Mutombo, while Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma, who desperately wanted to sign her, called her "the female Olajuwon." The coach who did get her signature could pencil in double-doubles most nights, All-America awards every year and three or four national titles.

None of that has come to pass for Goring -- none, that is, except for the double-doubles, and those have only started happening with regularity in the last month. After recovering from surgery for a herniated disk in October, Goring, now a fifth-year senior at North Carolina State (18-8, 7-4 in the ACC), made her first career collegiate start against Boston College on Jan. 11. She has been making the most of her time on the floor ever since, averaging a team-leading 12.9 points, 7.3 rebounds and 1.4 blocks in the Wolfpack's last 10 games. "It's been great to watch," said Wolfpack associate head coach Stephanie Glance. "I have to hand it to Gillian, because I think there were a lot of people across the country who didn't believe she could do it at this level."

How did Goring get from a can't-miss prospect to a major question mark?

Her tale begins in her native Trinidad, where she was recognized as a precocious basketball talent as soon as she started playing the game at the age of 7. At 13 she was a vice-captain on the U-19 national squad, playing with girls four and five years older. About that time, women's basketball recruiting guru Mike Flynn heard about her through the Internet and brought her to the U.S. to play on his Philadelphia Belles AAU team for two summers. Flynn eventually became her legal guardian and enrolled her at Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, Pa. After two years with the Patriots, Goring transferred to an Iowa public school, Waterloo West, so she could graduate with the class of 2002. In just 14 games at West, she averaged 17.1 points, 12.7 rebounds and seven blocks. She was a finalist for the Naismith Award and was named to the inaugural women's McDonald's All-American squad. Ending months of recruiting drama, she signed with Connecticut in April 2002, rounding out a blockbuster recruiting class that included Ann Strother, Barbara Turner, Wilnett Crockett, and Nicole Wolff.

But the Fab Five were reduced to four when Goring's ACT score fell one point shy of the number needed for athletic eligibility. "That was heartbreaking," says Goring. "It had been my dream to go there. But there had never been much emphasis on school when I was in Trinidad. As the star basketball player, I got away with everything. No one cared if you kept up your grades or not. It was tough making the transition to the U.S."

Connecticut placed Goring at Arkansas-Fort Smith junior college with the expectation that she would eventually arrive in Storrs with her academics in order and three years of eligibility remaining. Goring redshirted her first year at Fort Smith and, despite a series of nagging injuries, averaged 15.2 points, 8.4 rebounds and 3.7 blocks in her second. While Diana Taurasi and her other erstwhile teammates won NCAA titles in 2003 and 2004, Goring watched on TV, "but only a little of it," she says. "It was kind of tough knowing that was my dream and they were getting it done."

When Goring decided to use her second year of eligibility at Fort Smith, Connecticut stopped recruiting her. She reopened her recruitment and, after earning NJCAA All-America honors in 2005, followed one of her Fort Smith teammates, Tiffany McCollins, to North Carolina State. "I don't think that many people knew she had reopened her recruitment,"says Glance. "Even so, I think a lot of people questioned whether Gillian would really make it. She had had some injuries, and she had been to a lot of schools and had a lot of good coaches. There was some question of about how much Gillian really wanted to do this."

For a player dealing with injury and doubts, Goring couldn't have found a better head coach than N.C. State's Kay Yow, a nurturing soul who is battling breast cancer for the second time. "She taught me to never give up, to fight," says Goring, who spent her first summer in Raleigh rehabbing from surgery on a knee that had been affected by a bad ankle injury she'd suffered in junior college. "I'd go to her with my problems, and she'd counsel me while she was dealing with her cancer. That told me, whatever my problems are, they could be a lot worse. If she can fight through hers, I can certainly fight through mine."

In Goring's first year with the Wolfpack, she averaged 4.6 points and 2.9 rebounds off the bench. "That year was really tough, " she says. "My ankles and my knees hurt, and I wasn't producing like I had been. I got really down on myself."

This season didn't start out much better. After her back surgery in October, she missed the first six games. When she rejoined the team in December, she could only play about 10 minutes a game. Now that she can give the team twice as long, her production is soaring. "I'm still not the player I was, " she says. "But I'm working on it. This is the first time I've felt pain-free in my whole career. I'm having fun."

Goring doesn't think too much about the what-ifs of her career. "I'm really grateful for everything that happened," says Goring. "If I had gone to Connecticut, I wouldn't have had to chance to know Coach Yow and be a part of her life. My career hasn't always gone according to plan, but it has turned out for the good."

Goring is engaged to be married in June, and she'd like to continue her basketball career by playing professionally or becoming a coach. She may not leave college with any of the multiple championship rings her talent once promised, but she will have something she'll cherish even more: a degree in communications. "I stuck it out and I'm on schedule to graduate on time,"says Goring. "That is, by far, the biggest accomplishment of my career."


 

1]; } ?>