Women's Basketball Alum Khaila Webb Continues to Shine in New Arena

Story written by Mike Gore

ORLANDO - Khaila Webb has always been an Orlando Magic fan.

On Monday, she started working for the team she has loved and admired all her life.

Khaila enjoyed a great basketball career at UNC Asheville and was part of a golden era of Bulldog hoops. She played from 2014-18 and was a starter for three years for Brenda Mock Brown's teams. During Webb's final three years with Asheville, she was a key player on teams that won back-to-back Big South tournament championships in 2016 and 2017.

After graduating in 2018, Khaila went to law school at Barry College of Law in Orlando. She graduated this past spring and took her boards in July. Webb will find out her scores next month.

But by then she'll have been working for the Magic for a month as a Basketball Operations Graduate Associate-Strategy. Khaila's job will have her doing research and assisting the NBA team in many other areas.

"I'm excited to work for the team I've always been a fan of," said Webb a few days before she officially started. "My goal is to someday be a General Manager or a President of an NBA team and what a great place to start then with the Orlando Magic."

It's been a busy summer for Khaila as she graduated from law school, took her boards, and then applied for the job with the Magic.

"I saw the job posted on LinkedIn. I needed to apply for it and it was a grueling process," said Webb. "I met with a lot of different people and did the best I could. I was excited when they offered me the position."

While she's been away from UNC Asheville for four years now, she knows that her experiences both on and off the floor have served her well.

"Being a student-athlete at a great school like UNC Asheville really helped me in law school," said Webb. "In law school, you must have good time management skills. You can't afford to fall behind and if you do, it's extremely hard to catch up.

"But I learned how to manage my time at Asheville," she added. "You had to have time for basketball but you also had to make time for your studies. There's no question that being a student-athlete prepared me for the rigors of law school."

Not just in time management either.

"Law School is a big mental challenge," said Webb. "There's going to be days when you're knocked down by a professor or a test not going as well as you like. You've got to bounce back. You can't let it get you down. As a student-athlete, there are times you get knocked down, lose a game but you get back up and play again.

"In addition, law school can be quite competitive," she also said. "As a student-athlete, you have to be competitive and I know I was pretty competitive when I played for the Bulldogs."

Khaila enjoyed a great high school career at Dorman HS in Spartanburg and had several options where to play collegiately. Brenda Mock Brown was in just her second year at Asheville and just starting to build the program when the Bulldogs discovered Webb. Khaila agreed to take a visit up I-26 and that's all it took to convince her to wear the Blue & White."

"My visit to UNC Asheville was just awesome. The culture that the coaching staff had established convinced me right away that this was the place for me to come to college," said Webb. "The players treated me like I was part of their family. I loved the fact that it was such a small campus and everyone was so nice and wonderful. It was an easy decision to come here."

And Khaila has some great memories of her time at Asheville both on and off the floor. She was a part of two Big South Tournament championships and one regular-season title. Webb got to play in three straight postseason tournaments, including two NCAA tournament contests.

"I remember us winning the regular-season title in 2016 on the last day of the regular season over at Justice Center and what a great feeling that was," admitted Webb. "And then a week later, we beat Liberty to win the Big South Tournament at Kimmel Arena in double overtime. I remember what an incredible game that was and our fans came running down to the floor after we won.

"The next year we had to win four games in four days to do it and that was incredible," added Webb. "I was rooming with Chatori Major at the tournament and we'd come back to the room with ice bags because we were so sore from the game but we were so determined to win.

"We had a lot of adversity that year with injuries as we lost Ja'da Brayboy and Tianna Knuckles, two starting senior guards, to injuries," said Webb. "But we kept battling through adversity and found a way to get the job done. Both tournament titles were impressive but 2017 was really special to have to win four games in four days."

Webb finished her career with 1,109 points, 15^th all-time at Asheville. She was also quite successful in the classroom as she made the Big South All-Academic team twice in her career. Khaila knew she wanted to be a lawyer and worked as an intern for local attorney Al Messer while going to school for a year. She also interned for the school's legal department her senior year.

When it came time to select a law school, she ended up choosing Barry because it was a lot like UNC Asheville.

"Barry is a small campus where everybody knows everybody. It has a nice intimate atmosphere just like UNC Asheville," said Webb. "When I decided to go to law school, I wanted it to be at a place like Asheville. I found that at Barry."

Khaila is looking forward to working for her favorite team.

"I'm so excited to work for the Orlando Magic. I look forward to learning as much as I can and doing a lot of different things," stated Webb. "I hope to be a GM for an NBA team someday and what a great place to start."

University of North Carolina Ashville Athletics

Women's Basketball Alum Khaila Webb Continues to Shine in New Arena

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