Siobhán is a Commonwealth Games Silver Medalist and multiple British Champion Basketball Player, whose heart beats for education, empowerment and equality.
Born in Nottingham, England to a strong female figure, Pauline Prior and a lifelong feminist, Christopher Prior, Siobhán was raised with an empowered sense of self and a keen social conscience.
With a propensity to throwing herself into things head first, Siobhán openly shares successes, failures and the lessons she learns from them with the hope of educating others and empowering them to live, fail and learn along with her. Her hands on approach to life has seen her succeed at the highest levels within her sport. After a decorated start to her domestic playing career, Siobhán left the shores of the UK at the age of 18 as British Junior Player of the Year and headed to the USA to embark on a 4 year athletic scholarship at Loyola University Maryland in NCAA Division I. Here again she encountered many successes, amidst “failures”, leaving her senior season as her team’s leading scorer, a Mid Atlantic Athletic Conference top ten scorer and holding the school record for most three pointers scored in a single season.
Siobhán also saw success on the international stage, captaining England at U14, U16 and U18 level, becoming the youngest player at the time to gain a senior women’s England cap at age 16 and winning a bronze medal at the Division B European Championships with the Great Britain U20 team. Siobhán also represented GB at the senior level in a Eurobasket Qualifying campaign which saw GB clinch a place at the coveted Eurobasket.
As a senior player, Siobhán has played professionally for a number of years as well as playing at the highest level alongside gaining a Primary Teaching PGCE and teaching in a school for five years of her playing career. During these years she has captained her hometown team, Nottingham Wildcats, to two Women’s British Basketball League (WBBL) titles, 3 WBBL Betty Codona Classic titles and one WBBL Cup title. She has also received a number of individual accolades, being named to the All British top 5, All WBBL top ten and All WBBL Defensive top ten to name a few.
The pinnacle of Siobhán’s career came at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games where she represented Team England and won a silver medal with her team.
Siobhán now combines playing in the WBBL with a leadership and management role as the Director of the Nottingham Academy Wildcats. Siobhán works with young people in Nottingham, who engage in different levels of basketball, from participation level all the way through to performance athletes. She also manages a team of coaches and sports medicine staff that work with these same young people. In the first year of its existence the Nottingham Academy Wildcats programme won Basketball England East Midlands School of the Year. Following that Siobhán was selected by FIBA as one of 40 European basketball players to join the “TimeOut” programme that focuses on teaching and learning in leadership and management with Northumbria University, TASS and FIBA.
An advocate for gender quality, Siobhán involves herself in a lot of work that promotes and empowers young girls, young women and also female adults to be confident in finding their passions and following them without reservation. She has also gained a lot of recognition in this area, recently being named Basketball England’s Inspiring Female of the Year and also being selected as one of 40 elite sportswomen to be involved in the Women’s Sports Trust “Unlocked” campaign.
A lot of Siobhán’s passion lies in helping and supporting others.
You will get more of a sense of that and of who she is as you look through her website.
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I've been lucky to have had a number of life fulfilling successes but my journey to those successes has been anything but a straight line drive. It has taken left turns, right turns and complete 180s but ultimately I believe I'll always get there in the end. I believe in doing everything with your whole heart, messing it up, feeling the pain, learning the lesson and going again. I want to empower young people, especially females, to have the self belief to take risks, knowing that failure is an inevitable part of every brave step they take but that if they take it anyway they will find strength, success and self understanding. Life is a strangely unique journey and the beauty is we can all learn from each other's individual paths.
