The Impossible Return of USC’s Aliyah Gayles

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2024

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For the first time in 38 years, the University of Southern California has earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament. It’s the culmination of coach Lindsey Gottlieb’s three-year rehabilitation project for the once proud program. But for former high school phenom Aaliyah Gayles, who’d committed to the Trojans before Gottlieb took over, injuries from a shooting in 2022 had her wondering if she’d ever be able to play basketball again. ESPN Writer Katie Barnes started reporting on Gayles shortly after the shooting and over several months got intimate access to her family and the USC program. Today, Katie takes us inside Gayles’ long and courageous effort to return to the court. Katie’s E60 documentary on Aaliyah Gayles, titled “Only the Strong Survive,” premieres this Saturday at 11am ET on ESPN2 and will be available afterward on ESPN+. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick word of caution, this episode contains descriptions of violence.
0:05.0	Listen or discretion is advised.
0:07.0	Katie, was Alia Gales someone you'd had on your radar for a while?
0:11.0	She wasn't.
0:13.0	I learned who had Lea Gales was when I saw the news that she's been shot.
0:17.0	Police say gunshots erupted after an argument at a party.
0:23.7	One of the victims of the shooting was Alia Gales,
0:26.4	the eighth-ranked basketball recruit in the country.
0:31.2	I'm at Alia for the first time in early May of 2022.
0:37.0	She had been discharged from the hospital about two days after she was shot.
0:42.0	Katie Barnes writes about women's basketball for ESPN and in 2022 began reporting on then
0:48.9	USC recruit 18-year-old Alya Gales.
0:53.4	And she'd been in a rehab facility for about three weeks.
0:58.7	She's in her bed, which looked like a hospital bed, surrounded by family and loved ones.
1:05.0	And as I learned more about her and what was going on in her life, I became intrigued about
1:10.0	sitting alongside her as she made her journey of recovery which at that
1:15.1	point we knew was going to be a really long road. What was the prognosis on if she
1:20.2	would even walk, play again.
1:23.0	The question was, when would she walk?
1:27.0	At that point in time, the timeline seemed really long.
1:31.0	Although there was hope for basketball,
1:33.9	there was no real understanding
	...

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