Motivation.

The driving force behind someone’s success.

The internal voice that pushes a person beyond what they believe is possible.

It kick starts a tattered soul, and serves as the luminous way out when all else seems all too lackluster.

“I knew that I didn’t want to be a product of my environment,” said Saudia Roundtree, a former Georgia women’s basketball player. “Everyday I got out and played, I just tried to envision myself being more than what my environment, being more than what my surroundings were offering me.”

The Kilgore junior college transfer came to Athens to play for head coach Andy Landers and the Lady Dogs in 1994, quickly solidifying herself as the most renowned women’s basketball player to ever compete during Landers’ tenure.

Throughout the 1995-96 season, Roundtree repeatedly set the bar higher and higher every time she laced up her sneakers. In three consecutive games the Lady Dogs took on Connecticut, Penn State and Florida, and Roundtree set, then broke her career-high scoring mark with 27, 29 and 32, respectively.

“While I was going through it, I just never would have imagined that a kid from Anderson, S.C., would have been the player that I was [while I was] there,” Roundtree said. “Just coming from what I came from, just my background, I never thought I could be anybody.”

She made herself into somebody.

Roundtree was named the Naismith College Player of the year in 1996, and received the ESPY for Best Female College athlete in 1997. She also scored over 1000 points as a Lady Dog and still holds the record for assists in a season with 226.

“I got [to Georgia], I knew I wanted to take them to a championship, but I never would have thought that all the lives I would have touched while I was there,” Roundtree said.

The former point guard is the product of a single-parent household, along with her two siblings, and looked to pull herself away from the context and surroundings in which she grew up, saying “I wasn’t going back.” Raised by her mother, Roundtree worked to refine her “God-given talent”, and utilized her skills on the court to carve a pathway to college to earn a degree.

“Most people, they have everything. I didn’t have a lot. I took pride in having a scholarship, and getting a quality education from the University of Georgia. That just meant volumes,” Roundtree said. “I just feel kind of choked up because being at Georgia was probably the thing that saved my life.”

Since earning her degree in Sociology, Roundtree played three seasons in the American Basketball League, two with the Atlanta Glory and one with the Nashville Noise before hanging up her basketball shoes, and picking up a whistle.

Roundtree began her coaching career at Morris Brown College in 2001 before taking the head coaching gig at North Carolina A&T. The former Lady Dog was then an assistant coach at the University of Alabama for one year, as well as Central Florida.

The South Carolina native then found herself back in her hometown in 2007 when she accepted the position as an assistant coach for the Clemson Lady Tiger Basketball squad. After a two-year stint with the Lady Tigers, Roundtree made Denton, Tex., home when she accepted an assistant coach position in summer 2009.

Roundtree has used her childhood and young adulthood struggles as a topic of relation with her players, and tries to make a difference not only as a basketball coach but also impact her players’ on a more personal level.

“I didn’t have a father figure in my life. It’s easy for me to relate to these kids,” Roundtree said. “Once they see your heart and that you’re very sincere about what you’re doing and you have the passion, they can see that. I don’t have to talk about it.”

Roundtree has taken all the adversity that has come her way in stride, and the 33-year-old plans on marching forward while still remembering how she got to where she is today.

“I’m still growing, and I’m just trying to improve myself and being a better person and being a better basketball coach.”