Brea Beal goes from hometown hero to Gamecocks’ glue. Inside her ‘folklore legend’
When Brea Beal first saw the photo, she had to zoom in.
Baker Beal snapped a picture of a new mural in the gym at Illinois’ Rock Island High School and sent it to his older sister in South Carolina. Brea Beal called what she saw “kind of surreal.”
Lining the bottom of the bleachers at her former high school was a collage of Rock Island girls’ basketball memorabilia, including two large images of a high school-aged Beal featured among newspaper articles, team photo composites and other shots of Lady Rocks alumni.
“It was so cool to see,” Beal said. “Especially over the years, all the players that made an impact on that high school.”
Henry Hall, the head coach of Rock Island girls’ basketball, isn’t sure if Beal knows the extent of her impact on Rock Island.
Though she graduated in 2019, Beal remains a favorite topic among current Lady Rocks. High-schoolers carve out time in their lunch period to catch a South Carolina women’s basketball game if it’s on while they’re at school. Her former teammates bring up her games often.
Beal’s hometown legacy began before she was in high school. Stories of 40-point games in middle school created a “folklore legend about her,” Hall said. He watched that legend come to life as Beal finished her career as the all-time leading scorer in Western Big 6 basketball, boys or girls.
Yet in her third year with the Gamecocks, Beal isn’t posting statistics that jump out from the box score. She’s a mainstay in South Carolina’s starting lineup, but she places more emphasis on being a lock-down defender and steady rebounder. Dawn Staley calls her “the glue” of the team.
It wasn’t a role Beal quickly accepted, she said, but it became the challenge she welcomes.
“I just fell into the groove,” Beal said. “Now I take pride in guarding players. Like, ‘OK, you say you’re going top five? Let me see.’ It’s fun to do now.”
Autographs and expectations
Five-year-old Brea Beal just wanted to go to the playground.
Beal’s days learning the basics of basketball started when she was too young to understand why her father, Kevin Beal, kept her in the gym so often. It was full-go with her father once Brea Beal started YMCA basketball, with practices so intense she remembered thinking I’m just a kid.
She loved basketball though, and harbored that passion following Maya Moore, who won two national championships at UConn from 2009-10 before her six WNBA All-Star accolades and four league championships.
Beal learned from watching Moore. The more familiar Beal grew with basketball legends, the more enamored she grew with the game.
Beal had always been surrounded by the sport. Her father, who played basketball for two years with the University of Texas at El Paso, would often show her tapes from his college days. She watched his pick-up games, frequented both boys’ and girls’ basketball at Rock Island and practiced for hours that could’ve been spent on a swing set.
That extra time proved valuable before Beal got to high school. Larry Hall, an assistant coach at Rock Island who coached middle school Beal, said he was fascinated when he saw her score 47 points as an eighth-grader.
That fascination with Beal extended past her coach, as Hall watched her sign autographs and take pictures with fans after the buzzer.
Requests for signatures and photos continued throughout Beal’s high school career, especially when she traveled to opposing schools.
“It was almost like being around a Beatle,” Rock Island high school coach Henry Hall said. “Like we would go on the road, and she would have kids waiting for autographs for her, even as a freshman. It was insane.”
While she maintained her composure, Beal felt pressure when she knew young eyes were watching. She didn’t want to play poorly in front of girls who admired her. In high school, she feared disappointing them, hoping they wouldn’t be prompted to wonder That’s who I look up to?
Beal still remembers when opposing high schools called her overrated when she’d struggle in a game as a freshman or sophomore. Keeping those experiences in her memory is how she’s able to move forward.
“You felt that, you know what it feels like,” Beal said. “So you can just learn ‘I don’t need to hear it anymore,’ like it’s just whatever. You definitely have to feel that moment in order to get past it.”
Any attention Beal garnered in high school, positive or negative, didn’t detract significantly from her performance on the court. She played all five positions at Rock Island, averaging 26 points, 14 rebounds and five assists as a senior.
Beal earned three Illinois Gatorade Player of the Year awards and three Illinois Ms. Basketball honors en route to becoming espnW’s No. 11 overall recruit in the class of 2019 and receiving a scholarship offer to South Carolina.
As she reflected on her upbringing moments after a Gamecocks women’s basketball practice three years later, Beal felt thankful for the extra hours practicing with her father as a child. Those moments led her to success in high school and opportunities at South Carolina.
“I would not be at a (Division I) school on the number one team if he didn’t separate me from the kids,” she said. “During that time, I was kind of upset. I wanted to be a kid. But I do appreciate it because he set me up for the life I live now.”
Finding her role
Ralph Gesualdo grew frustrated.
Gesualdo, head coach of Midwest Elite, coached Beal in the 2018 Meltdown AAU Tournament against the All Iowa Attack, headlined by future Iowa Hawkeyes basketball star Caitlin Clark.
For the first half, Beal wasn’t assigned to defend Clark. Gesualdo didn’t want her falling into early foul trouble and needed Beal to trigger Midwest Elite’s offense.
But every time Gesualdo looked up, Beal had found a way to get to Clark. Two timeouts in, he called Beal to the sideline.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Coach, I never want to argue with you, but I want her,” she said. “I’ll shut her down.”
Beal remained respectful, but Gesualdo couldn’t argue with her conviction. All Iowa Attack had just won Nike Nationals, and the team went as Clark did.
Beal’s defense won the game for Midwest Elite, and Gesualdo admitted she made a better coaching decision that day.
“I think there may have been somebody that said, ‘Great idea putting Brea on Caitlin,’ ” Gesualdo said. “I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, brilliant.’ ”
Gesualdo met Beal when she was in eighth grade, when she became one of three incoming high school freshmen to break onto Midwest Elite’s sophomore team. The other two players to make such a jump were top overall 2015 WNBA draft pick Jewell Lloyd and Oklahoma basketball star Gabbi Ortiz, who started in 121 of 130 games in her four years as a Sooner.
Beal had “God-given” natural talent as an eighth-grader, Gesualdo said, but her skill level reflected the training she’d done with her father.
Beal’s difference was in her maturity. She could play any role on the floor, and Gesualdo knew she could score 15 points on a given night or be tasked to control the glass.
After a frustrating loss during her final season of AAU, Beal went to Gesualdo pleading for direction. Gesualdo found difficulties in managing a talented roster, and he had shuffled Beal throughout the season until she finally asked him to tell her where to go.
Gesualdo remembered how a teenage Beal told him she wasn’t concerned with thoughts from her parents, other coaches or outside influences. Beal told Gesualdo she believed in wherever he wanted to put her.
“She goes, ‘I have no agenda here other than making this team better.’ This is a junior in high school talking to a grown-ass man that has coached forever,” Gesualdo said. “(She) looked at me, told me that … I don’t think we lost a game after that. She is truly, truly special.”
Gesualdo noted his two favorite stories about Beal contradict one another, but her decisions made sense. She’s a team player first, and that trait followed her as she took the role she plays at South Carolina.
An ‘unsung hero’
Brea Beal hit a bump in the road as a freshman at South Carolina.
A piece of the Gamecocks’ No. 1 signing class in 2019, Beal entered with Aliyah Boston, Zia Cooke and Laeticia Amihere. She joined a roster full of talent and wondered if she belonged. Most of the Gamecocks had been the best player at their high school, too. What was her place?
Beal wanted to stand out, so she started honing in on her defense. She wanted to go 10 times harder when she was guarding to keep opponents from getting shots off. If she knew an opposing player’s favorite move, she wanted to shut it down.
“When I first got here, the role wasn’t accepted as well,” Beal said. “I still wanted to continue being that one scorer. I kind of felt like, ‘Dang, I want to score those buckets.’ But then again, we have people to do that, so let me take an edge off.”
Beal used her defensive skills to fit into the Gamecocks early. She started every game of her freshman year in 2019-20, when South Carolina finished a 32-1 season ranked No. 1 before COVID-19 canceled the NCAA tournament.
She found her belonging, and Staley said she now sees Beal help the most recent top-ranked recruiting class even at her own expense.
Beal takes pride in how she found her voice in Columbia. She said you wouldn’t hear a word from her when she first joined the Gamecocks, but she remembered how Tyasha Harris and Mikiah Herbert Harrigan guided her when she was a freshman.
“You’re always gonna have people like Brea Beal who are glues and who are unsung heroes of teams,” Staley said. “She embraces that role for us.”
Beal has played a key part in No. 1 South Carolina’s 16-1 start to the 2021-22 season, including its five wins over top-10 opponents through the majority of its non-conference schedule.
Beal received a shoutout from Maryland head coach Brenda Frese for her defense against Ashley Owusu, the nation’s reigning Ann Meyers Drysdale Award winner for the nation’s best shooting guard. Owusu, averaging 50% from the field before the USC game, shot 17.6% against South Carolina.
“I know a lot of times the role may go unnoticed,” Beal said. “But that is respect that I definitely appreciate, especially from a coach like (Frese).”
Back home, Beal’s legacy is enshrined on the mural in Rock Island’s high school gym. Beal said the magnitude of that mural probably won’t hit her until she sees it in person for the first time, which she expects to do over Christmas break.
Brea’s basketball success carries a legend back in Illinois, where her hometown is cheering her on at South Carolina.
“I’ve spoken with a lot of little girls who have said, ‘The reason I want to play basketball is, I want to be just like Brea,’ ” Larry Hall said. “You usually hear, ‘I want to be like an NBA player.’ … She gives a lot of people hope.”
This story was originally published December 28, 2021 at 10:16 AM.
