Quick Chat: Mikayla Coombs

By John Frierson
Staff Writer

After a few years without touching a basketball, Mikayla Coombs is feeling the itch to get back on the court.

"My last year of basketball, I loved our team, I loved everything about our program, but my body was just super tired and I kept getting injured," the former Georgia guard (and 2022 SEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year) said during a Staff Spotlight Q&A on Wednesday. Coombs added that she wanted to wake up one day missing the game — that's when she'd know she was ready to get back on the court. That day came about a month ago.

"I was like, Okay, I miss it now," she said.

Since hanging up her Lady Bulldog uniform after the 2022 season, Coombs has worked in development, first for UGA and now for the Georgia Bulldog Club, where she is the Assistant Director of Development for major gifts. A Double Dawg with degrees in Sport Management, Coombs knew she wanted to work on the business side of athletics, but her career in fundraising was even a bit of a surprise to her.

After a stellar prep career, Coombs, from Buford, Ga., signed with UConn. She spent two years with the Huskies before transferring to Georgia, where she played under Joni Taylor. Coombs is reminded of Taylor, now at Texas A&M, regularly, whenever Coombs gets up early and goes to Orange Theory to start her day with a challenging workout.

Taylor was an Orange Theory fan and a big proponent of early-morning workouts and how they prepare you for the rest of your busy day. Coombs gets it now, and she said she sometimes sees J. Reid Parker Director of Athletics Josh Brooks and other staff members there well before dawn.

During a recent Quick Chat, Coombs talked about her career in development, finding new athletic challenges, her career goals, and much more. Here's some of what she had to say:

Frierson: Is there a typical day in your job? Or is every day completely different?

Coombs: I wouldn't say every day is different, it just depends on the day or week. I travel every other week, so weeks I'm in the office, it's recapping everything from the meetings the previous week and planning our next visits to whatever territory I'm going to that next week. When I'm out of the office, it's that actual external work of being on the road and meeting with people.

Frierson: When Georgia has a big night like it did when men's basketball upset Florida, does that come with some sort of upside from a fundraising perspective? Do more people reach out to you?

Coombs: Wins like that are a great thing to celebrate, and I definitely think it ebbs and flows. I think during football season, and I actually did it (Tuesday) night, too, I would text people and be like, "Hey, I hope you caught the big win." It's just that initial touch point ... and a good segue into setting up a meeting.

Frierson: When you first went to UConn, or when you first got to Georgia, was this type of job on your radar at all?

Coombs: I always wanted to be on the business side of sports. And for some reason, I just loved football. The NFL was the biggest thing on my radar, and I did a couple of interviews, with the Jaguars and the Buccaneers. I actually made it to the final round of interviews with the Jaguars, for something in their sales department. But then I ran into (UGA Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations) Jill Walton at Jittery Joe's, and we sat down and I talked to her about development. And she told me about a position on the University side.

Honestly, interviewing for that job, I don't think I knew what I was interviewing for. Even when I got there and took the job, because I was very introverted in college, to jump into my first job as a fundraiser seemed a little bit crazy. I think with Joni coaching me throughout my time here and putting me in positions like the SEC committee (SEC Women's Basketball Leadership Council) and NCAA committee (NCAA Women's Basketball Competition Committee, where Coombs was the only student-athlete representative), it helped me get out of my shell.

Frierson: Any job where you have to reach out to strangers, even if there's a shared connection like UGA, can be tough. Add in asking them for money, for a donation, it's not easy — and it's not for everyone.

Coombs: I remember walking into my first meeting on the University side. I was like, I don't know how I'm going to do this. We had done all of this training, but I didn't know how to kind of weave it into the conversation. My first couple of months of meetings were the hardest thing for me; just leaving a meeting and being like, Did I even actually ask for money?

Once I got over here in athletics, it became a little easier. We have such a great product that (donating) almost comes up in conversation by itself. The Magill Society is doing so well, and a lot of people want to contribute.

Frierson: After all of your years of being an athlete, do you miss the competition? Have you found new ways to compete and push yourself?

Coombs: I've become a big Orange Theory fan. That was Joni's big thing; I thought it was the craziest thing ever, to go somewhere and get on a treadmill and to lift and just die. I was like, I was an athlete all my life and I can just go to the gym and just work out and be fine. I learned very quickly that wasn't the case. Because I've been told what to do at the gym my whole life, I just found myself staring at the weights and being like, I need somebody to tell me what to do.

Now, I go to a 5:30 a.m. class. Josh is in the class, Derek (Hammock, Associate Athletic Director for finance and strategic planning) is sometimes in the class too. ... Joni always told me that if you work out in the morning, you'll feel a lot better. I don't feel good when my alarm goes off, but the workout has been good.

I've also gotten into pickleball a lot. That has been a lot of fun. ... I wanted to be good at tennis when I was young; like, I actually had a tennis trainer when I was a kid, but they told my parents that I should stop [laughs]. I figured if you're paying somebody to teach you how to do something and they think that you're that bad that you should stop, that's probably a bad sign.

Frierson: Do you know what you'd like to be doing in 10 years? Would you like to get into college sports on the administrative side?

Coombs: That's something that I've been thinking long and hard about lately. I've always wanted to be an athletic director, and I think there are still aspirations there in that aspect. But Josh's job is tough. Watching him operate has been cool to see — just his ability to adapt and everybody on the executive staff's ability to adapt.

I think for me right now, I love fundraising, I love what I'm doing right now, but there are so many different things within athletic administration that I think would be interesting, ... I'm trying to figure it out, but I'm also trying this new approach this year of, you're just 25 and it's okay to take some time to figure it out.

(This Q&A was lightly edited for length and clarity.)

Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files.

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