“How tall are you?” 

Viola Downie is asked this question almost every day. (She stands at 6 feet tall). 

Then the question, “Do you play basketball?” is usually asked. 

Downie confidently says, “Yes!” to this question every time it is asked.

Downie is a freshman at Arapahoe High School. She began playing basketball at South Suburban recreation team when she was 9 years old and will begin her first season at Arapahoe as an Arapahoe high schooler this year. 

She was an athletic and tall child giving her an easy way to start basketball. She plus her friends were bored and needed an activity. She tried many sports because of this including swimming, tennis, golf, and diving but her favorite sport always stayed basketball.

Downie has played for T2, CBC, Hardwood, and her school’s team. She said it has been difficult to balance her club and school team but she still always manages a way. 

She has focused more on her club team in the past but this year for Arapahoe she will focus more on her school team. 

Her goal is to one day play Division One in college. She will play for any school she gets an offer from but, specifically, would like to attend Hawaii State, Texas Tech, Creighton, Iowa, New Mexico, etc. 

Downie is a power forward but her favorite position to play is point guard. She prefers defense over offense as she can get blocks and steals. 

When asked what the easiest and hardest part about basketball is, she said, “There is no easy part, but the most difficult thing is how time-consuming the sport is. You either have practice, lifting, or a game every day.” 

She and others can see that she has a very locked-in mode while playing basketball helping her accede over others. Whenever she’s on the court she is focused and won’t let anything stop her from playing her best. 

Her goal this season is to win the championship and improve all of her skills. During pre-season, she was able to showcase her skills and averaged around 13 points and 10 rebounds a game.

For Downie, basketball has a big mental aspect to it as well as physical. She said, “Basketball has lots of mental aspects, just like any sport. If you want to improve you need to have the mentality to show up to practice, try hard, and get better. Without that mindset, you will never improve.” 

For Downie basketball was an escape from anything going wrong. Whenever she believed she wasn’t good at anything, basketball was always there. People could call her bad at things, but they would be lying to tell her she was bad at basketball. 

Winter season is about to begin, and her advice to any new players is to work hard, have a good mentality, and always strive to be the best you can be on the court.