From the Land Down Under to Virginia Tech: Georgia Amoore Becomes a NationaL Sensation

Josh Collier

Staff Writer

December 8, 2023

BLACKSBURG – Growing up on a horse farm in Ballarat, Australia, Georgia Amoore fell in love with basketball at a young age — and continues to improve.

“My cousin brought me into it,” Amoore said. “I went to watch her game when I was 5 years old and after some players fouled out they didn’t have a fifth person to play, so I got pulled from the stands. Since then I haven't stopped — I just wanted to be like my cousin.” 

Amoore played various other sports growing up, including netball, football, soccer, taekwondo, swimming, track and tennis. 

In high school, she decided to prioritize training for basketball. 

Amoore played for the Under-17 Australian Women’s National Basketball team in 2018 and competed in the World Cup in Belarus. Conveniently enough, Virginia Tech’s women’s basketball head coach, Kenny Brooks, attended the tournament on a scouting trip. 

After Brooks watched Amoore play internationally, he saw her potential to be a great competitor and team leader, and ended up offering her a scholarship. 

Amoore did not believe she was quite ready to compete in the Women's National Basketball League in Australia at the time, and one of her main goals through playing basketball was to travel the world. This led her to the conclusion that coming to America to play college basketball was the right path for her to take. 

Amoore was also offered a scholarship from her cousin’s school, the University of Portland. However, after she visited VT’s campus in the fall of 2019 and noticed the immediate connection she had with coach Brooks, the choice was easy for her. 

The transition from Australia to living full time in Blacksburg, Virginia posed unique challenges for the young athlete. 

After graduating high school in the fall of 2019, Amoore came straight to VT in January 2020 to begin practicing with the team that spring before making her appearance on the court the following fall. 

One of the first major changes in living conditions she noticed was the abnormally cold weather that Blacksburg provided. 

“I had never seen snow before,” Amoore said. “Where I’m from, the coldest it would get was zero degrees Celsius [32 F], which I thought was terrible. I come here and it’s much worse… the wind is just insane.” 

Another adjustment Amoore had to make right away regards the food in Blacksburg. She had to constantly be eating in order to prepare herself for the increased intensity of college basketball practices, but the food was also less healthy than what she ate at home. Her body took a while to adapt to this change in diet.

“The first two weeks I was actually pretty sick. To be quite honest, I probably ate a lot fresher and healthier in Australia,” Amoore said. “When we started practicing, we did so much that I just had to fuel myself and I was eating a lot of bad stuff. It took some time but I think I’ve figured it out now.” 

Those two challenges that the new VT student and point guard had to overcome in early 2020 were minute compared to what she faced in March of that year. 

In March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic became widespread, classes went fully online and travel restrictions were put in place. This meant that Amoore was unable to return home to her family without the risk of not being able to get back into America, and she had to find a home in the U.S. 

Luckily for her, she had made a great friend in her teammate and current roommate, Elizabeth Kitley. 

“When she [Amoore] got here full-time, we clicked immediately,” Kitley said. “I was the one who had the car so I always invited her places to make her feel welcome. I think we knew we were going to room together so we just kind of formed that connection.”

When Amoore had no other place to stay during the pandemic, the Kitley family kindly offered their home in Summerfield, North Carolina. 

“It takes a special kind of family to open up their home and basically adopt Georgia… that’s pretty much become her home here in the U.S.,” said Evan Hughes, play-by-play announcer for VT women’s basketball. “I think it goes to show the quality of people that are in the VT women’s basketball program.”

The pandemic did provide at least one benefit for Amoore and the Kitleys, as they became much closer because of it. However, that did not make up for the almost two years that Amoore had to go without seeing her family. 

Amoore knew that attending a college so far from her home would be tough to begin with, but being stuck in America over the summer because of travel restrictions made it far worse. On top of that, the time in Ballarat is 16 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, which made it even harder for her to keep in touch with her family. 

Amoore was finally reunited with her family when they came to visit in December 2021, after the travel restrictions had loosened up. Since then, she has been spending the summers traveling back across the globe to her hometown to be with her friends and family. 

Amoore had to adjust to American basketball on the court by adapting to NCAA basketball rules, in addition to finding ways to still perform at such a high level despite often being the smallest player — 5-foot-6 — on the court. 

She grew up playing by the FIBA rules in Australia, which differ in many ways from women’s NCAA rules in America. The biggest change is that fewer fouls are called in FIBA, which leads to more physical play. 

Ever since coach Brooks took her in to play for the Hokies, he’s been focused on getting her adjusted to NCAA rules and finding ways for her to use her lower center of gravity to her advantage. 

“I don’t think of [my height] as a disadvantage,” Amoore said. “I’ve got speed so that helps me.” 

Amoore’s speed, combined with her vision, ball-handling skills, shot-creation and toughness has made her a very difficult player to defend over the past four seasons. 

Through her first three years as the starting point guard for VT, Amoore has averaged 13.3 points, 4.7 assists and 2.6 rebounds in 94 games. Within her first seven games this year, she’s increased those numbers to 18.1, 7.6 and 2.9 respectively. 

She has never missed a game since she began playing for Tech, and during her first 101 games she’s helped lead the team to a record of 74-27. 

She’s achieved numerous accolades since becoming a Hokie as well. She was an ACC All-Freshman in the 2020-21 season, a first team All-ACC member in the 2022-23 season and was named the ACC Tournament MVP in 2023. During the 2022-23 season, she recorded the first triple-double in program history, along with the most three-pointers made in a single season in program history, with 118. 

Amoore’s basketball journey won’t be ending after VT. 

“I definitely want to continue to play, and my ultimate goal for basketball always was to travel the world — I think I’ve done pretty well with that,” Amoore said. “I’m just trying to experience the world, learn as much as I can and then hopefully, someday, coach.”

She also mentioned that making the WNBA is “definitely a goal” for her, although it would not be the “be-all end-all.” 

The WNBA is one of the world’s hardest professional sports leagues to make. The NCAA conducted a field study in 2018 that found that only about 12% of all draft-eligible players from Power Five schools were drafted into the WNBA that year. That is on top of the fact that the average height of a guard in the WNBA is 6 feet tall — 6 inches taller than Amoore. 

A challenge like this is nothing new to Amoore. Considering what she had to overcome to get to where she is now, it is evident that she will continue to prove people wrong. 

Not having success in the WNBA wouldn’t be too big of a let-down for Amoore, though, as she’d still be able to follow her main goal of traveling the world by playing in other countries, and then could pursue a coaching job later on.

From stepping on the court to sub in for her cousin’s team when she was just 5 years old, to being separated from her family on the other side of the Earth for nearly two years during a pandemic, to leading Virginia Tech to its first-ever ACC Championship in 2023, Georgia Amoore has gone through and accomplished many incredible feats during her lifetime. One could only imagine what she has in store next.