Brittany Drew ’15 is big into visualization. You know what I mean: she’s one of those people who imagines what success looks and feels like, using those visuals as motivation to achieve her goals.

But what if your dreams are so vast that even your imagination struggles to contain them?

A few months before graduating from Guilford, Brittany, a four-year standout on the women’s basketball team, saw her playing career winding down. Next stop: the real world. She created a vision board, covering it with aspirational words and images.

“I was feeling a little empty and knew I needed a plan,” Brittany says. “I started thinking about what I wanted to do with my life and writing everything down — like a big checklist.”

One of her biggest goals was to start a nonprofit. But before she could put that on her board, another dream emerged: helping young women athletes train properly. Maybe even starting a youth basketball league. So many goals, so little space on the board.

And then, there was coaching. Brittany wanted to coach basketball — starting in high school, with hopes of reaching the collegiate level. She hung her vision board on her bedroom wall, ensuring she saw it multiple times a day. As she tells it, the board was always in the corner of her eye, both literally and figuratively.

“I made sure it was in a place where I had to see it every day,” she says. “It got overwhelming at times, but I kept looking, and one by one, I started to check them off.”

If you’re keeping score, Brittany accomplished all of her goals. She checked off the last one a year ago when the University of North Carolina at Wilmington hired her as an assistant women’s basketball coach and recruiting coordinator. She wrapped up her first season with the Seahawks last month and is now on the road, scouting players to help rebuild a team that has had just one winning season in the past 14 years.

“It’s been a lot to take in for a first year,” she says. “Sometimes it’s been a blur, but this is what I wanted. I put it on the board, but I wanted it long before that board.”

Guilfordians might remember Brittany as one of the Quakers’ iron-horse women’s basketball players. She scored 872 career points, tallied 199 assists and recorded 104 steals. Her 110 games played ranks third in team history. She worked just as hard in the classroom, double majoring in Exercise & Sport Sciences and Health Sciences.

“If I’m being honest, I came to Guilford for one reason—to play basketball,” she says. “Education was second, but that changed. I realized how important education was to me. When I left Guilford, I was as proud of my academic achievements as I was of my athletic ones.”

Her degrees, combined with her vision board, led Brittany to start Drew Effect Sports, a nonprofit basketball camp in Greensboro that works with young athletes on and off the court. She also runs the Drew Effect League, featuring high-level college players, Greensboro standouts and even former NBA player J.R. Smith.

That recurring name, Drew, is an acronym: Dream, Rehearse, Execute, Win. Brittany says she had herself in mind when she created both programs.

A standout at Page High School in Greensboro before heading to Guilford, Brittany never had many opportunities to play over the summer.

“I wanted others to have something to come home to during the summers,” she says. “It’s important to have something you can count on.”

Both programs do more than promote basketball. Leaders serve as mentors to participants and hold them accountable for plans they make for middle school, high school and beyond. “We make the kids, the girls and the boys, think about what they want to do with their lives, come up with a plan and make them take ownership of everything,” she says.

That’s what Brittany did after Guilford. She imagined what success looked and felt like after college and used that feeling as motivation. After all, visualization, she says, is a tool right out of most athletes’ playbooks. The thing is, elite basketball players aren’t closing their eyes and imagining the feeling of cutting down the nets with confetti raining down on them. “I tried to visualize every single movement, every move I needed to make to get there,” says Brittany.

That’s why she coached at the AAU level in Greensboro for a few years and later coached a local high school’s junior varsity women’s team before taking over as the head women’s coach of High Point Christian. The school’s men were already a perennial state power, but the women struggled. It didn’t take Brittany long to recruit some of the best players in the area and turn the program around. As a result, the team has been to three consecutive state finals.

Along the way, Brittany’s success caught the eye of Nicole Woods, who was then an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. A year after Woods took over at Wilmington she called Brittany.

Nicole says Brittany reminds her of herself as a younger coach. “She is hungry, she is hard working, a relationship builder and most importantly, a winner,” says Nicole. “Her connections throughout not just the state but the country are an asset to our program.”

Brittany says she’s excited about hitting the road and trying to build on the Seahawks’ modest success this year. A year after Wilmington finished 5-24, the Seahawks went 14-18 this year. “We need to find the right players to build the program and we will,” says Brittany. “I’m excited to be part of a really great program with a great system in place.”

Brittany’s thrilled to be an assistant coach at a Division school, but she’s not done. She wants to be a head coach some day. She wishes she had kept her old vision board, the one she had at Guilford, but only for sentimental reasons. Times have changed. “I plan on doing another board very soon for my newer goals,” she says.