Melita Emanuel-Carr is a professional basketball player that has represented Team England and Team GB in all age groups. She made history with the England team in 2018 by winning a silver medal in the 2018 Commonwealth games in Australia. 

At junior club level she dominated all competition winning every league and cup possible in England which gained her a full scholarship to numerous colleges in the USA. Settling with the University of Illinois at Chicago Melita was a part of the starting 5, 3 out of her 4 years and was captain in her senior year. After graduating with a Criminal Law degree Melita has applied her knowledge by creating a Stop the violence basketball campaign which aims to bring awareness to the rise in knife crime in the UK. The campaign also aims to promote participation in basketball as a pathway for progression for young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds as Melita’s lived experience is testament to the fact that “Basketball is a way to change and save lives".

Melita also is a motivational speaker focusing on helping people to overcome adversity by using her personal experiences. In the future Melita aims to start her own mentorship programme to help young people express themselves in a positive way. To learn more about Melita, her playing career and the vital work she’s doing to raise the profile and participation of basketball community visit melitaemanuelcarr.com and get involved.

In this sixteenth episode of In Her Corner, we talk to Melita about balancing athlete welfare and the pressures of winning, the role of the modern-day athlete being more than what happens on the court and why the sports industry needs to be more proactive in taking ownership of tackling gender and socioeconomic inequalities.

You can listen to the trailer for Melita’s episode using the player below:

Melita’s full episode will be released at 1pm BST on Thursday 22 October and will be available to listen to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other major streaming platforms.

Podcast theme track by Wayne Urquhart  and Mix Engineering by Nick Murphy.