DENVER — The process toward an authentic life starts with opening up some old wounds. After years of bottling up her traumatic past, Denver women's basketball head coach Doshia Woods is no longer swallowing the whistle.
"Well, after years of therapy, because now being a full-blown adult in my 40s, I've been able to look back and not realize how hard something is because you're just trying to get through it, and to be able to use my platform, I know that when I talk to some of my inner-circle individually, they tell me how inspiring it was," she said.
'Hard' is a way to describe sprints after a bad practice. What Doshia experienced in her youth was life-altering, and she recalls the exact moment it changed forever.
"I was excited because I had just made varsity [volleyball] as a freshman and I remember coming home and there was yellow tape all around and they said, 'hey, you've got to get to the hospital, there's been a drive-by [shooting].' At this time in our life, our house had become the drug house and I remember seeing [my mom in the hospital], being excited on one hand because I couldn't wait to share this news, but on the other hand seeing her laying there in the hospital for three or four days, and I remember saying, 'when you get home, I'm not going to be here,"' she said. "My mom passed in 2013, but one thing I appreciate more so now is the courage that she had to just let me leave at 14. It wasn't even a conversation, she just said okay. She was around when she needed me, she was around, I would see her if I can, but the courage she showed as a mom to just say, 'I know I can't do it but if you can find something better, I trust you,' and she trusted me or I wouldn't be sitting here."
Doshia trusted the coaches around her to provided a temporary home throughout the rest of her high school career and to keep her involved with sports, eventually leading to junior college and then a college basketball career at Western Illinois.
"Being active in any sport, your coach gives you a chance at least during that two to three hours, you don't have to think about anything," Doshia said. "For me in my situation, I didn't have to think about if there was going to be another drive-by, I didn't have to think if we were going to have food that night, or what type of abuse was going to happen, I could focus on the court. So, coaches become a big part in that in helping you have that outlet."
It's all about perspective. Now, as a head coach of a DI basketball team, Doshia posts the word 'Grateful' each morning on her Twitter/X page as a reminder of how far she's come.
"She went through a lot from physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse. Literally every day, if I catch myself having a moment, I keep a picture on my phone and it's me with a basketball when I'm like 10 years old. I have to stay positive because I know how hard it was for her and the hard things that she went through, basketball could never be that hard, life could never be that hard. I wasn't in control then, I'm in control now," she said. "Every day I tweet 'Grateful,' and it's really just a thank you to my younger self. If she doesn't survive then, we don't have an opportunity to thrive now, and I take that same message on the court. It's really a message to my younger self, what she endured and what I get to live now, it's hard to catch me having a bad day. I had enough of them. I don't want one when I can control it."
Doshia first opened up about this story as part of the Hometown Hero series for Active Discovery, an organization who's mission is to foster activity, encourage learning, launch discovery and strengthen key relationships to transform children’s lives despite tough circumstances. The DU women's basketball team will host an Active Discoveries Day during its game against Stetson on Saturday, December 9, inside Hamilton Gymnasium (1 p.m. MT).