Alissa Pili has always been a physical force on the basketball court, but the place she first learned to dominate athletic competition wasn’t on the hardwood, but the gridiron.
on Friday when she scored a career-high 33 points and added eight rebounds and eight assists, she backed down junior forward Alasia Smith in the paint seemingly with the greatest of ease. She caught the ball, took two hard dribbles left, spun middle and scored, knocking Smith over in the process.
“She was on the defensive line right next to me doing pretty much the same things I was doing — bullying boys her age,” Brandon Pili said.Football was Pili’s first love, and she played from third through eighth grade. In sixth grade, she started wrestling and would do so against boys, but that didn’t last as long.Although Pili knew her wrestling days were numbered, she did learn some valuable lessons from that time in her life.
But eventually, Pili ended up on travel teams and earned the reputation as one of the best players Alaska had to offer. By the time she graduated school, she was a well-oiled machine who won three Gatorade Player of the Year Awards for her state and earned the Pride of Alaska award from the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame.Pili was recently named second-team All-America by the Associated Press and the United States Basketball Writers Association.
When she transferred to Utah, Pili had a mission: get in the best shape of her life. She changed her diet and started asking for extra conditioning work even though conditioning was her “worst nightmare.” She built a connection with Lindsey Kirschman, Utah’s director of sports performance for women’s basketball.
“Those daily choices of how you’re eating, how you’re training, how you’re recovering, how you’re living off the court have been the difference for her,” Robert said. “And her discipline … has been incredible — I’m just so proud of her.” “I think I just learned how tough I can be and kind of just proving to myself that I could dominate whether it’s boys or girls,” Pili said. “I think that really just showed me how strong I was as an athlete and just as a person.”
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