Miss Universe Cayman Islands Chloe Powery-Doxey is not only a beauty queen, but the George Town native also rules on the basketball court as a guard on the national women’s team.
Last month, Powery-Doxey, 26, was part of the basketball team’s record-making run to a silver medal at the Island Games in Guernsey.
“It’s a great honour… it’s been [20] years since we had been on the podium. Whether or not we got the gold or silver or bronze, we were still happy to have made that leap after so long,” she told the Cayman Compass in a recent interview.
Powery-Doxey represented Cayman on the international pageant stage in New Orleans in January, and while that holds special significance to her, she said being able to stand on the podium as part of the national basketball team was a dream come true.
Now, after the recent win, she has her sights set on champions Menorca, Cayman’s basketball ‘nemesis’.
“I really want to beat them so bad,” she said.
Beauty and basketball
Though she said she has always been into sports, basketball was not the first sport she tried.
“I am really good at sports and I’ve known that since I was a little girl. I was playing netball at first and I realised that wasn’t particularly the sport for me. I needed a bit more contact,” she said.
She started playing basketball, but it was a later chance meeting with basketball coach Redver Ebanks in her school that set Powery-Doxey on her path to national glory.
“[He] came into my sixth grade classroom and asked if any young ladies would be interested in playing the sport of basketball, and I immediately raised my hand ’cause I knew this was gonna be something that was really for me,” she said.
Powery-Doxey fell in love with the sport and has not looked back, and 17 years after she first picked up a basketball, she has the privilege of wearing the national uniform.
She said she still trains with the same basketball, and even sleeps with it in her bed.
“This is my boyfriend,” she said, jokingly, as she bounced the ball on the court at the John Gray High School gymnasium during the interview.
Balancing both worlds
Last year, Powery-Doxey decided to try her hand at another type of contest when she entered the Miss Universe Cayman Islands pageant.
She was named first runner-up, while Tiffany Conolly won the crown.
However, controversy over Conolly’s eligibility ensued and she was later stripped of the title after being convicted of assault and other offences and is awaiting sentence.
Powery-Doxey was subsequently crowned Miss Universe Cayman Islands, and while she said it has been an experience she will not forget, she has moved on from the events of last year.
“That chapter is closed now,” she said.
While some may see her sporting achievements as a way of restoring honour to the title, Powery-Doxey said that was not her responsibility, but one that each woman who wears the crown holds.
“I think anyway that a young lady who has beautiful intentions could carry this crown and restore honour to it in whatever way she sees fit, that would just make her proud. I don’t feel like it was my responsibility to restore something I didn’t break… it’s the person wearing the crown that matters and what they have to offer,” she said.
Balancing the worlds of pageants and basketball comes easily to her because it boils down to time management, she said.
“It’s not hard. It’s just you are who you are, and if you feel you’re beautiful, then you go about your day being just that. And if you’re talented, as I am in playing basketball, or you just love sports in general, then you’ll manage it somehow,” she said.
Powery-Doxey said since she’s been crowned, her teammates often tease her and have nicknamed her ‘Princess’ and ‘Queen’.
She said she has taken that in her stride and has even incorporated some antics into her routine on the court.
“While we were playing, I would just stand in ‘pretty feet’ [a pageant pose] and we do this thing where it’s like jazz fingers, to wish them luck when we are on the free throw [line], and whenever they’d score, I’d finish with a little follow through,” she said.
Powery-Doxey said both basketball and the pageant have taught her a lot.
Growing up, she said, the sport helped her with discipline and control as she’d had some anger-management issues, while pageantry has made her a better player on the court.
“It has definitely led me to be a lot kinder. I used to be very, very aggressive and it softened me up a bit… I’m actually glad for that, because I can think more clearly and not [make] petty mistakes, [like] foul another player, and then that might cost my team in some way,” she said.
National women’s basketball coach Wendy Manzanares said having Powery-Doxey on the team was a boost to her teammates.
“It was an honour to have Chloe playing with the national women’s team,” she said. “I think that she not only brought some inspiration to some of the ladies on the team, just seeing her in both roles on the court, as a fearless warrior off the court as a queen that she is, but also she was able to, because of her long experience in basketball, really show her leadership characteristics to the team.”
More respect for female athletes
Powery-Doxey said she would like to see local female athletes get the respect they deserve, as well as the types of sponsorship their male counterparts receive.
“We don’t get any respect in any field that we do, and that’s a very sad thing,” she said, adding that intersecting pageantry with sports was one means of getting recognition.
She said the whole experience, her crowning and success on the basketball court, has given her many life lessons and she wants her fellow Caymanian women to heed her call and “make some noise”.
“Tell them who you are,” she urged. “Show them that you are capable as a Caymanian woman. Show them that they cannot stop you, no matter how small this place is. Go wherever you need to go and bring honour to yourself.”
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