'Coach was like an aunty to us — things I wouldn’t tell my parents, I could tell her'

The first time Grace tried basketball was in the summer term of year 8 when a charity called Greenhouse Sports arrived at her school in Croydon and their coach started running basketball during PE.

Grace was sporty but, other than netball, girls’ sport at school was patchy and inconsistent. “I found netball very constricting,” she says. “As soon as you touch somebody, it’s a foul. But the Greenhouse coach started doing dribbling and shooting drills and what I loved most was the physical contact. Instead of feeling restricted, I felt liberated. It is one of the happiest memories of my childhood.”

At the end of the session, the coach picked some of the girls to try out for the school’s inaugural basketball team — and Grace, just 13 and one of the youngest, was selected. She would later go on to play National League basketball, get her coaching and officiating qualifications, become Head Girl, open doors for herself at university and, by age 25, earn more than the combined income of her parents.

Up until that point in year 8, the two words Grace uses to describe her life are “absence” and “excluded”. As the oldest of four siblings (later to become seven) in a low-income household, she experienced the absence of material things other children took for granted. And as the child of strict immigrants from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she was expected to be home by 7pm and felt she was “missing out” on life.

Grace, 25, turned to basketball and found confidence and a plum job through Greenhouse Sports

John Nguyen/JNVisuals

“My mother was a dinner lady and my father a school chef and they did an amazing job putting food on the table. But when it came to things like fixing a broken mobile phone or replacing worn-out trainers, I would have to wait until birthdays or Christmas whereas my friends got things instantly. I knew money was tight and so when my friends went to the funfair or to shows, I wouldn’t even ask to go because I knew we couldn’t afford it. I felt left out. My friends went to music festivals and gigs, but I had to be home by 7pm. They went on nice holidays; the only place we went was to visit my grandad in Birmingham.”

Grace adds: “I look back with enormous gratitude to my parents but, as a teenager, you’re only attuned to what you’re not getting, and it left me with a feeling of deprivation, a sense of deficit. It knocked my confidence. I remember one of my friends going to see One Direction and talking excitedly about getting their signatures and me thinking, ‘that will never happen to me’.”

But the arrival of Greenhouse Sports gave Grace a new passion and, with it, a new sense of self. She no longer worried so much about the things she was excluded from. Instead, she leaned into the opportunities she found with the support of Coach Alexandra Raymond. As she leaned in, her life began to change.

This month, The Standard has joined forces with Greenhouse Sports to create Sporting Chance, a campaign that is championing sports coaching and mentoring to help transform the lives of disadvantaged young Londoners. So far, £500,000 has been pledged by the Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund, of which half will fund Greenhouse programmes in five secondary schools in London, reaching up to 500 children. The other £250,000 will support four further charities offering coach-mentoring in football, boxing, martial arts and kayaking. To reach more young people like Grace, we are seeking donations from corporations, philanthropists and you, our readers.

How your money can help Greenhouse Sports

£15 Could enable a young person to access their programme for a week

£65 Could provide four weeks of sports coaching and mentoring, helping a young person build confidence, resilience and a sense of belonging

£165 Could provide coaching and mentoring during school holidays

£800 Could provide a full year of coaching and mentoring, ensuring they stay engaged with school and develop the life skills to fulfil their potential

Grace continues: “Growing up in a deprived area made me want to earn more than my parents. Coach Alex taught me that the sky’s limit. She took me under her wing and made me believe I could become a professional sportswoman. She created sporting opportunities for me and introduced me to key area trials that helped me play basketball at a higher level.”

Grace started playing for a National League team, but it was the mentoring relationship that proved most valuable.

“Coach Alex and I connected as people,” she says. “She was like an aunty to us — things I wouldn’t tell my parents, I could tell her. My parents were very strict: I wasn’t allowed a boyfriend until I was 18 and I wasn’t allowed to travel outside of Croydon because my parents worried about youth violence. Coach persuaded them to relax those rules so I could play basketball outside the borough, and I talked to her about boy crushes, school problems and the hurtful things people said. I always felt Coach Alex had my back.”

Greenhouse also helped Grace take her first steps into work, encouraging her to aim high and apply for an internship with M&C Saatchi, which she secured, before later being employed by them as a junior account executive. After two years, she moved on, landing her “dream job” with a global sporting brand as a digital publishing assistant.

“By my early twenties, I was earning more than my parents and that made me happy but also sad,” she says. “It made me want to push my parents to achieve their goals in the way they had always encouraged me. My dad went and got a degree in business management partly because of me.

She adds: “I don’t know where I would be without Greenhouse. Their fingerprints are all over everything I have done, including achieving my financial and career goals for my twenties and building better relations with my parents and other authority figures. Now I’m more financially stable and I live in my own rented flat. If my younger brothers want the latest football boots, they know they can hit up their big sis.”

Campaign in a nutshell

The Standard has joined forces with Greenhouse Sports to deliver sports coaching and mentoring to up to 500 young people in five secondary schools across some of London’s most deprived boroughs. So far, £500,000 has been committed by the Standard’s Dispossessed Fund, with half going to Greenhouse Sports and the balance divided between four other sports charities. We are calling on corporations, foundations, philanthropists — and our readers — to give generously. Every pound raised will fund Greenhouse programmes in London, enabling more young people to build brighter futures.