Gabby Williams is an American-French basketball player who plays for the Chicago Sky of the WNBA and will play for Hungary’s Sopron Basket in the upcoming season. A 2x NCAA Champion at UConn, Williams was drafted 4th overall by the Sky in 2018.
What are your thoughts about the WNBA’s social justice efforts and the importance of dedicating this season to Breonna Taylor?
Deciding to come to the bubble was really hard for us as WNBA players, because this was at the forefront of our minds. So as a league, we decided that if this season was going to happen, it would be dedicated to this cause.
Can you talk to me about the social justice campaign (“Sky Takes Action”) that you and your teammates launched?
Before we even came to the bubble – before we even knew we were having a season – we often spent time on team Zoom calls to discuss how each of us has been affected by racism and social injustice. As a team, we really wanted to do something together that made us feel like we were provoking change, and being seen and heard.
“Sky Takes Action” is a campaign where my teammates and I donate our own money, based on our performance during the game, to five local organizations after each game we play. For example, every point is $10, every win is $100 and every loss is $50. We’re also challenging the fans to match our donation collectively. After our first game, we as a team raised over $1,000 because we scored 96 points and won. Our fans kicked our butt and raised almost $2,000.
Why do you think it’s so important as an athlete to use your platform to speak up about social justice issues?
We’re trying to normalize the reality that we are citizens, Black people, women – we’re whatever we are and we’re basketball players. The two come together. We’re not one or the other. They are intersectional.
We hear the phrase “shut up and dribble” all the time. But when we step off the court, we’re Black women. We’re citizens of this country as well. It’s so important that we use our platform to normalize this idea that this is a part of who we are. And if people are going to watch this on TV, they’re going to know who we are.
Using your platform as a player was one of the reasons you decided to opt into this season in the first place, right?
Yeah, exactly. I was going back and forth between the dangers of coming back for this season. I decided to embrace it and realized there could be an even greater thing that comes out of this. Look at the numbers – we’re finally getting the attention that we deserve. I thought how powerful it could be in a time like this, when we’re in this kind of national turmoil, for a young Black girl to turn on the TV and see powerful Black women on the screen, basketball players who are also using their platform to speak about their community and what’s important to them. We thought that could be really powerful.
How do you think that the league has handled all the different logistics leading up to life in the bubble and now with games happening?
It’s been surprisingly pretty good. I don’t think anyone expected it to be absolutely perfect. But the way we monitor our temperature every day to the way we’re getting our food delivered – it’s all been really great. So, I’m pretty impressed with how IMG and the league put this together.
There was a lot of momentum with the new CBA before this season. How do you think that the WNBA can keep it going in the bubble?
We’re just getting what we deserve – at least a portion of it. We’ve been preaching and saying for years that if you just give us the chance, people will watch us and enjoy our games. We play good basketball, and the WNBA is a good product. With the CBA, the league is paying us more money – and we’re showing that we deserve it.
Last time you spoke with JWS, you were locked down in France after the French League season and you had your cat with you. Were you able to bring her to the bubble at all?
There’s no pets allowed on the IMG campus. I’m sleeping alone at night. I get a lot of pictures, and I have her photo on my fridge.
Do you think that it’s been hard to stay motivated while living in such a different environment this season?
It hasn’t been difficult at all. I mean, we’re competitive players at the core – it’s a part of our identity. For sure we miss our fans, but we still know that we’re playing for them. We know that people are watching us on TV. We also know a lot of people are watching us for the first time. It hasn’t been hard to stay motivated. It’s been so fun to play again, especially with this team. I think the team is just so special.
Chicago has come out well in the opening games. What are your thoughts on how the team is playing so far? How do you keep this momentum throughout the rest of the season?
Our first two games were important to us, because we won those games as a collective team. Everyone contributed. Everybody got a piece of the action. A lot of us had to step up in roles that we haven’t necessarily been in with Stefanie Dolson out at the last game [Dolson sat on the sidelines with an ankle injury at the Sparks game], with Diamond DeShields being limited in her minutes [DeShields is recovering from a knee injury]. It’s forced a lot of us to be in positions that we weren’t in before. The fact that we showed that we can step up and rise to the occasion is a really good sign for the future of our season.
How do you feel like you’ve transitioned back into playing?
Just like any return to training camp, you have those bumps and bruises that you have to fight through. But overall, I’ve just been so excited to be back and play again. And during quarantine I got time to take care of a lot of things in my body that I needed to take care of.
With that said, after our first game, I literally told myself I forgot how hard basketball is. There’s nothing you can really do to prepare for 40 minute games except playing 40 minute games. I’m sure by the middle of the season, we’ll be back in the swing of things.
You recently signed to play with Hungary’s Sopron Basket. What led you to this decision?
I’ll be going to Hungary this year instead of returning to France, which I’m a bit sad about because of course it was so nice to be in the motherland and be with my family. [Williams is American-French.] But I’m really, really excited about this next team. Unlike the US, Hungary handled COVID very well. So they’re expected to start the season on time. I’m not exactly sure what will happen with the Euro league, but Hungary is fine. The first couple of games might overlap with this WNBA season, depending on playoffs and things like that. Regardless, I’ll go after this WNBA season is over.
A member of the U.S. Volleyball and Beach Volleyball National team, Kathryn Plummer is the only player in history to have won FIVB World Championship medals in both beach and indoor. In 2019, Plummer was part of the US national team that won the Pan American Cup in Peru. An alum of Stanford University’s volleyball and beach volleyball teams, Plummer is a three-time NCAA champion and a recipient of the James E. Sullivan Award, which is annually given to the best American amateur athlete. Most recently, she played for the Italian professional volleyball team Saugella Team Monza.
After graduating from Stanford shortly after winning your third NCAA championship title, you chose to join a professional volleyball team in Italy. What made you decide to play overseas?
For women’s volleyball, there’s not much opportunity to play professionally in the United States as of now. The Italian professional volleyball league is very competitive – I knew I would be surrounded by the best players in the world. I wanted that challenge.
Playing Italy was definitely a challenge. First of all, it’s a challenge in and of itself to be away from home: You’re in a whole different culture, people are speaking a different language. You’re being coached in a different language. Additionally, the process of transitioning from a collegiate athlete to a professional player is quite a process. From finding an agent to finally negotiating a contract there were various steps involved before I finally got to visit the team. Between the NCAA semifinal and the championship during my final season at Stanford, I squeezed meetings with four or five agents in my hotel room all while preparing for the national championship.
With all this said, I’m glad I got to go to play overseas. I’m young, and I want to learn new things.
How was your season affected by the pandemic? What are your plans moving forward?
By the end of February, our games started to get postponed, and competing seemed no longer to be an option. At that point, pretty much all we could do was just practice, and I ultimately made the decision to return home in the United States. The league was officially canceled when I arrived back in the U.S.
Hopefully, I will be able to play next season, but with various international tournaments that were originally planned for this summer have been canceled much is up in the air.
Ok. So let’s backtrack a little bit to when you first started playing volleyball. Did you grow up playing both beach and indoor volleyball in high school?
Growing up, I was the “sporty” girl. I played basketball, soccer, softball – everything that you could imagine.
I grew up in Southern California, where men’s volleyball is a big part of the culture. My older brother played volleyball. I was the little sister that wanted to go to everything, all the practices, all the games. In a way, I was kind of forced into watching it. I decided to try it myself and first started playing volleyball when I was 10. I really loved it, and soon began to exclusively dedicate my time to the sport … Although I guess in high school, I was on the track and field team, but it was more of a hobby than anything else.
Were you really tall as a kid or did you hit a growth spurt later on?
Yeah, I was really tall. My parents are 6’8″ and 6’3″, and my brother is 6’7″. We’re a very tall family.
You were recruited by various universities. What made you ultimately decide to go to Stanford?
My recruiting process started pretty early – I got my first offer in the seventh grade. Academics and athletics are most important to me, and Stanford excelled in both.
But the thing that drew me in the most was that when I visited Stanford, I felt that I could be myself. Everyone at Stanford is kind of quirky, and weird – they all have their own little thing that makes them unique. At other schools, I felt like I was trying to put on this facade to fit in with their program, but at Stanford, everyone was different in their own ways – I felt like I could really thrive there.
Well you definitely did thrive over there! You started your Stanford athlete career by winning a national championship your freshman year. What was that experience like?
I’ve talked about this with my teammates from class many times – it was kind of a blur. I think we were just immensely joyful.
The other championships that we won together throughout our Stanford experience felt different than our first. Our freshman year was one of just pure happiness because we were giddy freshmen that didn’t really know the gravity of what we had accomplished. We were following a lot of senior leadership.
What type of expectations did you set for yourselves following such a great first season?
As a team, we talked about trying to not listen to the expectations that other people were putting on us. The next three years, I think we pushed ourselves for a strong season because we knew that we could hold ourselves to high standards, as opposed to pushing ourselves to meet any sort of external pressure cast upon us.
In your second season at Stanford your team’s campaign to the finals was cut short after losing to Florida 3-2 in the NCAA semi-finals. What was that experience like?
Pretty much throughout my entire sophomore season, our team breezed through. We had a tough preseason – we did really well. We had a tough conference – we did really well.
I think by the NCAA championships, we let the expectations that were set upon us starting from our successful 2016 season creep in a little bit. We didn’t feel like we were just playing a volleyball game – we felt the pressure to follow up a championship win from the previous year.
We just weren’t a cohesive group. Both Florida and Stanford played good volleyball, but our competitor was more of a cohesive team than we were.
Following the season, we sat down and really tried to bring together our whole team. We sought to find ways to support every member of our team – I thought this was really important and allowed us to have a lot of success the next two years.
You won three national championships during your time at Stanford. Is there one that is most memorable?
I definitely think my senior season was the most special. All of the seasons were really awesome, but senior year was most memorable because it was the last time I was in a Stanford uniform, the last where my parents watched me play in college and the last I was going to get to play together with my teammates. It was a very bittersweet, happy yet sad moment. My teammates and I were crying because we were happy that we won the championship, but also sad because we knew it was over. Our whole four years – and everything we built in those times was over.
Why do you think your class on the team has been so successful as a unit?
We were best friends off the court too, which is nice, but that is by no means necessary to have a successful team. I think we embraced different leadership roles on our team. As for myself, I tried to lead by example – I tried to figure out how to score. Other people had different types of leadership styles: For example, Morgan Hentz was a leader that kept everyone accountable; She made sure that everyone was doing their job. Jenna Gray was the goofy one that lightened the mood when it was too tense. Audriana Fitzmorris was the very intellectual, analytical one. Everyone came together to form a very cohesive group. We worked really hard to figure out ways to support and communicate if people were struggling. There were many tough conversations in the process, but I think it came together at the end.
What was your academic experience like at Stanford? Stanford is a very academically competitive institution as it is athletically – was anything particularly challenging?
I studied Human Biology. My sophomore year was tough, because I was taking the core classes for my major which was hard.
But after that, I really liked my courses, because I could take the classes that were very applicable to my interests. I’m very interested in how the body works in exercise and sports. I took a bunch of anatomy and human performance classes, which was really cool. As an athlete, I started to understand my own body better at the biological and molecular level.
You also played on the Beach Volleyball team as a freshman and sophomore at Stanford. How did you balance playing two sports?
It was tough to play competitively for two seasons in one academic year, but it was also nice to be able to get a little breath of something fresh. It was really tough in the winter quarters, because I was practicing for both indoor and beach.
I eventually made the decision that I wanted to start my professional career in indoor and maybe transition to beach later on in my career, because beach is a lot more forgiving to your body when you’re older. So, following my sophomore year I solely focused on playing for the indoor team.
What are your future goals for the sport?
Since I was little, it has been my dream to go to the Olympics. I’m going to be playing professionally at least until 2024. There’s a lot of things that will unfold up until that point, but I want to try to make the Olympic team. Then we’ll see what I want to do, but that’s way far away. There’s always a professional career in beach volleyball – you can get paid for that, which is nice. I also just might have a normal job and work in an office. Who knows?