The triumphant rise of Latanya Wilson, Thunderbirds and Jamaica netball star, began with tragedy
Latanya Wilson emerged from downtown Kingston to become a Super Netball champion and World Cup contender. Her brother did not live to see it, writes LINDA PEARCE.
Latanya Wilson’s brother Trevonne did not live to see her sign with the Adelaide Thunderbirds in 2020 but despite his tragic death just weeks earlier, there was no doubt what he would have wanted for the talented young sibling he adored.
To leave the family home in edgy downtown Kingston and join the elite in Super Netball.
No matter what had just happened and how hard it all was.
Just go.
“It was a very difficult period, if I’m being honest, for me at the time,’’ Wilson tells CODE Sports. “I was actually still grieving. I was really excited about the opportunity and devastated at the same time, cos I was well aware of the fact that my brother would no longer be here to see me achieve my dreams.
“This was our dream in a sense that he even wanted it more than I do … and if I had made that decision to stay home with my family, I knew that he would be disappointed in me because this was always the goal, and to finally get the opportunity and be turning it down wasn’t the option that would be best for me.’’
Trevonne, the second-eldest of the nine Wilson children, was there for Latanya’s senior international debut in a low-key home game against Barbados, despite her best efforts to keep the occasion secret from the more boisterous, demonstrative and “dramatic” family members.
He would send messages of support during her brief pre-Covid stint in the UK Superleague with Celtic Dragons. Wear her team tracksuits and give away her sports shoes while bragging about his sister, just a bit.
He’d have insisted she join the Thunderbirds, where Wilson has been a ball-winning revelation in the past two seasons and is now a premiership player at the age of 21.
And between now and August 6, he would be keenly watching the Netball World Cup, which the Sunshine Girls enter as genuine contenders. They open their title quest on Saturday against Pool C minnows Sri Lanka.
Latanya thinks often about what Trevonne would make of where she is now. She knows he would approve.
“Oh my God, I do, and I actually cry in the sense that I know he would be so proud,’’ she says. “When things are getting better, it kinda like gets worse at that stage in a sense that so much is happening but he is not part of the journey.’’
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The Wilson clan ranges in age from 32 to seven. Five girls and three surviving boys. Mum Carol Dick “is working three and four and five and six jobs”. Dad Devone is self-employed.
Australian Rob Wright, the Jamaican specialist defensive coach and part-time resident, describes downtown as “the absolute toughest part of Kingston, and Kingston’s not for the faint-hearted, by any stretch of the imagination’’.
His description of the fleet-footed Latanya is as a kind, humble, gentle and deeply religious soul, with a rich talent and innate competitiveness and drive to improve.
“I loved growing up in downtown,’’ says the Mico University business student, who is determined to also build a non-netball career. “There is always something going on there. Such a diverse community and there is so much happening.
“I won’t say it’s like the best to raise a family, but it’s definitely the best where you can learn lot of stuff like how to be strong, how to just persevere at true challenges, and for me growing up in downtown Kingston have shaped me in such a way that I am so persistent in everything.
“Like, I’m not going to stop and I think if I was raised anywhere else, I might not have that quality about me; that thing that I possess that is so important.’’
Money was tight. So, too, the extended Wilson family.
“It’s more about just making memories, laughing, doin’ stuff. It wasn’t like you could evidently see that there was money lacking, cos we weren’t short of anything in that sense and we have so much love for each other, which was awesome,’’ says Latanya, or “Latty” as she is known.
“That’s the biggest thing to take away in the sense that I’m amazed how my mum did it, and my dad, to actually raise nine children and for us to be so loving and sharin’.
“Just as an example, if we had, like, one biscuit, my mum would say, ‘If you bring that biscuit in the house then it’s going to share with everybody, so if you don’t want to share it, you’d better have it outside’.’’
Latanya’s fondness for netball started in primary school. In a different, more peripheral role, but not one that she resented.
“I was actually the water girl,’’ she admits. “Nobody wants to actually play with me, because I always slowed the game up and they just didn’t want that!’’
It was only in high school, with the help of coach Dalton Hinds, that Wilson started to properly grasp such basic skills as catching and landing. Yet her development was then so swift that by 16, she was the baby of a Jamaican World Youth Cup team that included Shamera Sterling, Kadie-Ann Dehaney and Shimona Nelson.
That experience, and the precious opportunity to travel outside the Caribbean, cemented her international ambitions. Wilson was on a roll, as she likes to say, and if the senior squad came next then so did her impatience to succeed in a more humbling environment, where selection and game time were slower in arriving.
Her ill-fated 2020 stint at the Celtic Dragons lasted only two games, and one send-off/suspension for rough play, before the pandemic intervened.
“Oh my God, I was just a reckless player. I’d go for everything!’’ she laughs. “I didn’t understand the fine-tune detail of having a line to the contest and when you should contest, and I was just like, ‘Everything I can go for I am going for!’
“Playing SSN has definitely brought some structure to my game. Let me tell you: the competition is so fierce and the level of intensity is incredible. I kind of understand a little bit more. Still a lot to learn.’’
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So Plan A was the UK, to use as a stepping stone to Australia or, failing that, New Zealand.
“But then Plan A crashed and Plan B was with Shammy,’’ Wilson says of her close friend Sterling, whose recommendation to the Thunderbirds’ coaching staff in need of a circle defender led to that precious contract for 2021.
“No one knew nothing about me. Definitely not. You wouldn’t, because I wasn’t playing much game with Jamaica and I didn’t get to have a season in the UK where coaches might have seen me there.
“But then out of the blue, there goes Shammy saying, ‘Thunderbirds might want you’.’’
A brave call was a brilliant one, as it happens. A promising 13-game first season in 2021 preceded a breakout second under the guidance of respected T-birds defensive coach Cathy Fellows, as Wilson ranked second in the league for deflections (70) and third for intercepts (31).
The 2023 season was spent across all three defensive positions, including in the overtime grand final defeat of the Swifts, before Wilson joined Sterling, Dehaney and former Magpie Jodi-Ann Ward in what is almost an embarrassment of defensive riches to squeeze into Jamaica’s starting seven at the World Cup.
The quartet helped to deliver a historic silver medal at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, having sensationally upset the Diamonds in the group stage and pushed them in a four-goal decider.
Wright’s assessment of Wilson, the player: “Amazing foot speed. You can’t believe how quick this girl is. Sometimes she doesn’t even realise how quick she is. But just wants to be better, and that’s probably the hallmark of all the Jamaican defenders, even a Shamera.
“Latanya, Shamera, they don’t give away penalties and they come up with a ton of ball, so I think they play the game in a really good way and I think all the defenders generally do that. We’ve tried to make sure that they’re really tidy. It’s no good to anyone standing out of play.’’
Wilson says she and Sterling share a willingness to give each other constructive criticism in the moment, and something of a big sister, little sister relationship on court in which the older one tries to be the boss but the youngster insists that’s her job.
Together, they are formidable and versatile, with the long-limbed, 188cm Wilson now more comfortable on the wing as a result of Tilly Garrett having become the T-birds’ more regular starter at GD.
“To be thrown at wing defence, well, it’s more appreciating the position, cos I didn’t know that wing defence was that much work!’’ Wilson says. “So the more I appreciate the position is the more I am getting to love the position and it bring another exciting level to my game.’’
Then a cheeky pause. “I mean, you might even see me at centre one day…’’
Maybe. But not on the strength of what Wilson describes as her “atrocious” 2020 Test debut in the pivot against former England star Serena Guthrie. And not, if Wright has any say, at this World Cup.
“I know they’ve spoken about Latanya playing centre; I was thinking ‘You’re not playing centre, I’m not letting you out to play centre. Look at you! Look how good you’ve been!’
“And her feeding’s OK, but it’s not world class by any stretch of the imagination. But her defence is.’’
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Still months from her 22nd birthday, Wilson admits that even she is surprised to have done as well as she has, so fast.
”To be in the best league in the world and to be doing so good, like, it’s unbelievable. I’m 100 per cent sure it’s not me. That’s a fact. I’m sure it’s not me. It has to be God.’’
Managed by a pastor, Derrick Brown, Wilson says she “can’t go nowhere without prayin’!” She attended church regularly with ex-Thunderbirds Shadine van der Merwe and Lenize Potgeiter, who will be representing South Africa in Cape Town.
Mum Carol will be following the World Cup from Kingston while caring for the family’s two youngest children; without the funds to pay for her sisters to attend, Wilson will instead be relying on her Jamaican and extended netball “family” for in-person support.
She admits she learnt plenty from her first pinnacle event, the Commonwealth Games.
“Should be kinda shittin’ my pants up but I didn’t,’’ Wilson says, in her inimitable fashion. “It was an amazing experience, Words literally can’t explain how I felt, just being there, seeing the crowd, everyone cheering for Jamaica. It’s that feeling where you feel fulfil and so grateful for everything.
“One of the big key thing that I took away from Commonwealth Games is how to handle the pressure of competing at the highest level. Oh my God, it can be crazy, nerve-wracking.
“In the moment, you feel like you just want to die but you don’t know how to die! But it’s those moments where you just have to stand up to the challenge and being part of that team for Jamaica to be given a silver medal, it’s just amazing.
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“To play in the final, which Jamaica haven’t for a long time, was quite tremendous and I have learned how to actually appreciate the opportunity to represent my country on the biggest stage.
“It’s reminding yourself sometimes that you are living the life of so many young girls.’’
While, always, remembering a brother she still feels beside her, boasting about a sister who is where he always hoped she would be.
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