Finding A Path Through Sports

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- Dontavia Waggoner thought her college basketball career was over.

Boston College's season had ended, she thought, when the Eagles gutted through a seven-point loss to North Carolina in the Second Round of the 2025 Ally ACC Women's Basketball Tournament. Her 32-point performance against Syracuse offered a capstone to a hard-fought season, and BC's overall program entered postseason mode in the aftermath of its flight home from Tobacco Road.

Summer plans and career fairs dotted schedules lined with a direct road towards final exams and professional careers. A phone call from the Women's Basketball Invitational Tournament - the equivalent of the men's National Invitational Tournament - changed that direction, and for Waggoner, that meant one more game in her familiar maroon and gold jersey.

"When we knew we were going to the WBIT," she said in a recent interview on The Podcast for Boston., "everybody realized that we hadn't touched the ball since literally the ACC Tournament. People had just gotten back from breaks and back into workouts, but we had some teammates that were home because it was such a thing that happened out of nowhere. So we went into that game against Villanova where we were just like, 'Hey there's seven of us. We might as well have some fun. We wanted to win, but we wanted to have fun."

Months after leading the Eagles to a surprising postseason berth, the former Boston College women's basketball captain embraced the reckoning of a potential life outside of basketball by representing the university at the Career in Sports Forum, a four-day invitational for athletes at every level of NCAA intercollegiate who are interested in finding a career path within the sports industry.

"The NCAA forum was very eye-opening," she admitted. "The experience was life-changing. I met a lot of different student-athletes who are on different career paths. I met some people that weren't players or student-athletes but already worked in the industry, and it was just a weekend of getting to talk to speakers who had different paths through sport. Every day consisted of us going through breakout rooms with color-coordinated groups to discuss the different ways to get onto the right path towards what you wanted your career to be."

The conversation surrounding a student-athlete's career plans for life after sports is often overlooked within the modern day debate surrounding realignment or name, image and likeness, and basketball, in particular, featured approximately 2,700 men and 1,300 women entered the transfer portal in search of different opportunities. Approximately 25 percent of all women's basketball players entered the portal in some capacity, a stark ratio accounting for the 300-plus teams adding at least one player to their 2025-2026 roster.

The Career in Sports Forum is therefore a critical piece of the peripheral discourse aligned with the NCAA's greater mission. The four-day event in Indianapolis aimed to help attendees understand the process of navigating a career in sports that could occur after their playing days were over and included presentations from professionals throughout the industry.

"The Career in Sports Forum," read a release from the NCAA, "focuses on professional development, equipping participants with the tools to navigate their careers effectively. The forum also emphasized the significance of self-awareness and the willingness to adapt and grow, essential traits for success in the sports industry."

Those traits led directly to Waggoner after her college basketball career touched nearly every possible button of the modern game. A four-year member of BC's program, she began her career with NC State before establishing herself as a defensive specialist for the 2021-22 Eagles' run to the WNIT. She later became a more rugged starter for the team's aftermath and battled through injuries to register 15.8 points and 8.2 rebounds over an 11-game span in 2022-23. She'd later develop into an offensive stalwart and emotional centerpiece on the team's transitional phase, and she finished her fifth year of college as BC's only player with 1,250 points, 600 rebounds and 250 steals.

"I have always wanted to get into sports broadcasting," she said, "and after the experience at the forum, it's still very much something that I want to do. I think that the forum just gave me different ways to go about it. It's not something I have to do immediately, and as long as I'm getting on the right track, that's what [the talks] really taught me. I'm still playing basketball, and I'm signed to play overseas, [but] I want to get the experience to figure out what I want to do [when it's over]."

That mentality is exactly how basketball players should view their world. Time, as it's readily known, catches up to every athlete, and every athlete is forced into a retirement. Nobody, it seems, can play forever. But recognizing the future is exactly what makes Boston College different, and it's why players like Waggoner are setting themselves up for their future lives - even as they continue to dedicate themselves to their initial passion for play.

"That's one thing I had to learn when I was finishing up college," she explained. "I didn't know if I wanted to do this, but then I started to think that playing overseas is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. You can travel the world and continue playing the game that you love at a higher clip. That's how I see it, and that's what made me really double down and say that I wanted to do it. It's what's on my path to the future before I actually get into what it is that I'm going to do after I'm done playing."

Players Mentioned

Dontavia Waggoner

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