When Sarah Graves isn’t getting buckets on the court, she’s pouring over buckets of paint, painting and drawing her life’s most colorful memories.
AUSTIN, Texas — Sarah Graves goes hard in the paint – literally.
When the Texas Women’s Basketball senior guard isn’t on the court, you can find her with a blank canvas, painting and drawing her life’s most colorful memories.
“I’m just drawing a preseason picture of me running on the track, kind of suffering through life a little bit,” Graves said.
Pencil, paper and a lot of patience. What started out as doodling in her high school classes eventually turned into masterpieces.
If you ask her, she’d say it’s a lot like her basketball career.
“I was running track, funny enough, actually, and my 8th grade coach was just like, ‘Hey, no girls play basketball at our school. Do you want to just at least try out?’ And I go, and I can’t make a lay up, and I suck, and I make [the] freshman C team. I didn’t even know there was a C team,” Graves said.
Like any piece of art, the first couple sketches – or, in this case, scrimmages – weren’t pretty.
“I was not athletic at all. I didn’t even know anything about basketball,” Graves said.
But she saw the beauty in basketball and kept going, eventually walking onto the team at Texas.
“It wasn’t necessarily like I’m so passionate about basketball and I love watching it. It was just I can see the potential of what I can be, and so I’m just going to work tirelessly until I can make it happen,” Graves said.
She didn’t just make it happen. She etched her name into the basketball history books, earning a scholarship at the University of Texas her sophomore year. And later, a prize spot on Coach Vic Schafer’s wall with a portrait she painted – one that took her three days to perfect.
“I think it’s falling in love with the process, as cliché as that seems. It’s not necessarily like, ‘Oh, I wanna be the best basketball player at Texas.’ It’s more so just, ‘How can I push myself to be a little bit better than I was yesterday, and where does that eventually take me?'” Graves said.
It takes you pretty far. All you have to do is pick up the paintbrush and get in the game.