“We didn’t have all the luxury growing up.” Angel Reese has had her fair share of hurdles on the road to success. Raised by a single mother, the Chicago Sky forward’s early years were marked by the challenges of growing up without a father’s support. But that wasn’t the only chapter in Angel’s life that tested her strength. Reese recently opened up about another difficult period, one that added to the layers of challenges she had to face to get where she is today.

On the 27th, the Sky star joined Speedy on Complex(Conversations) where she was asked to throw light on moments that meant the most in her life. Before coming to the answer, Reese shared the story from her college days that was quite difficult to go through, but yet she made out of it.

“I was just about to say graduating from college. That was probably not the hardest thing for me school-wise but mentally. People came out and said I was failing school, I wasn’t playing basketball games because I was failing or my GPA or all this BS,” stated Reese.

During her early college years at LSU, Reese was sidelined from basketball games for an unspecified reason. Rumors circulated that her poor academic performance, specifically a low GPA, was the cause of her benching. Reese would reveal months later, in September, that her absence stemmed from mental stress.

“We lost to them [Colorado] and it was just a whole big uproar after saying, ‘I’m not focused. We’re not focused. She’s only worried about magazines.’ Social media blew me up in both a positive and negative light. For me, it was hard to balance both,” Reese had revealed on the first episode of her podcast, Unapologetically Angel.

Coming off a championship season, the LSU Tigers had lost the first game of the season. Already the spotlight then, the increased attention and the hate was a lot to take in. And if that wasn’t enough, the now 22-year-old also had to face disheartening speculations over missing the games. But it was her mother and the intention of making her proud that kept her going.

“Being able to look at my mom in my eye her eyes and say like you don’t have any debts like I went to school for free,” the Sky#5 mentioned on Complex. Given that she was raised solely by her mother, her deep affection for her is understandable.

Raising against adversities, Angel Reese knows she has earned her fruits

Reese, born to Michael and Webb Reese, inherited a strong basketball lineage. Both her parents were accomplished college basketball players. Her father played for Boston College and Loyola University, while her mother played for the University of Maryland. She even had a stint in professional basketball in Luxembourg.

But it was Reese’ mother who would introduce her to the sport after she split with her husband when Angel was young. Angel Webb Reese would raise the two kids alone, make sacrifices, imbibe confidence. But the Baltimore native had previously shared the difficulties of being raised by a single mother.

“I mean we didn’t grow up poor but we didn’t grow up where we had all the money and everything was given to us so I kind of got into a mindset where I have to grind I have to do this now and I like look back at it like it was all worth it. There were days I didn’t want to get up and go to practice and go to school and have to do those things,” she admitted previously. But this only made success all the more sweet.

“Knowing that [hard work and struggles] I like always appreciate the way I was raised because I’ll always be humble just be able to know like ‘this was not just given to me I had to actually really really work for it.'”

So Reese’s path to success was not without its obstacles. Financial constraints meant that college wasn’t a given. However, when she received a scholarship, she saw it as a way to repay her mother for her sacrifices. Now, as Reese enjoys the fruits of her labor, it’s clear that her mother’s dedication played a significant role.