Former NC hoops star is chasing WNBA dreams. But she also fantasizes about a normal life.

The best high school athletes — the ones that lead their teams to championships, and earn all-city, all-county, all-state or maybe even All-American honors as individuals — often go on to become good-to-great athletes in college, or some sort of developmental league.

But the vast majority of the young men and women who have hopes of ascending to the top of their respective sports eventually come to a realization that we non-star athletes figured all along: Becoming a “major-league” athlete is very, very difficult, if not impossible.

Today, we’re introducing you to four of those from the Charlotte area, two men and two women who were sports stars at local high schools; who still maintain home bases here; who have struggled in their pursuit of stable top-tier pro careers; but who haven’t given up yet.

If Erin Whalen hadn’t transferred from Vanderbilt University to the University of Dayton after her first two years of playing basketball for the Commodores’ women’s team, it’s quite possible she’d be working in medical device sales right now.

Quite possible the ex-Providence Day star and former N.C. Gatorade girls basketball player of the year never would have gotten even that brief opportunity at training camp with the WNBA’s Indiana Fever last spring. Quite possible she never would have spent last summer in New Zealand, or more than six months in Spain starting last October.

“I honestly didn’t think too much about the professional side until I got to Dayton, where I had coaches that were so invested in me,” says Whalen, a star guard/forward in her final two seasons at the school — 2020-21 and ’21-22 — that awarded her with both a master’s in communication and an MBA. “Up until then, just playing in college was always the goal. But I didn’t think an un-athletic kid that’s primarily just known as a shooter could have even the potential to play overseas and to get to the WNBA.

“It wasn’t until I had coaches that truly believed in me and saw my work ethic, and forced me to realize my worth in the sport.”

Ever since, she’s been trying to live up to that potential.

Athletes on the Brink

These four Charlotte-area athletes were sports stars at local high schools. They still maintain home bases here and have struggled in their pursuit of stable top-tier pro careers -- but haven’t given up yet.

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In April, Whalen finished a season with a pro team in Bembibre, Spain, as its leading scorer; but it wasn’t enough to generate any interest from WNBA clubs. So this month, she will leave her hometown of Charlotte again to play professionally for a team in San Sebastian-Donostia — on the northern coast of Spain — to make a living while also continuing trying to impress America’s top pro women’s league.

Part of her is thrilled for another highly unique life experience.

In the past 15 months, she’s seen parts of the world she may not have ever seen otherwise, and she’s been compensated decently enough. (Whalen was paid roughly $13,000 for her 2-1/2 months in New Zealand and in Spain she’s getting a bump up from the $3,500 a month she earned this past season. Plus, pretty much all of her expenses in both countries were covered.)

Living abroad can understandably be isolating, though. And at 25 years old, she sometimes finds herself questioning her choices in life as they pertain to basketball and being a pro athlete.

“I think it’s just because it’s so ingrained in our society of, like, you go to college, you get a job, after you get a job for a couple years, you get a house,” Whalen says. “I see all my friends, their social media, and it’s like, Ugh, I could be doing that as well. And, you know, yeah, I can also do that five years from now. That’s not gonna go away. ...

“But there are days where I’m like, ‘What am I doing?’”

On those days, she remembers how much it stung to get cut by the Indiana Fever, and how much it stung this past winter when she failed to get another WNBA training camp invitation.

On those days, she wonders whether all of her hard work and sacrifice will ever pay off.

There are other days, meanwhile, when she closes her eyes and recalls the thrill of seeing her last name on the back of a WNBA jersey when she tried out for Indiana. How big of a rush she got during the first of the two preseason games she played in with the team during training camp, when she hit two 3-pointers early on and looked into the stands both times to see her friends and her family, she says, “just going crazy.”

And she keeps landing on this conclusion: It still could happen for me.

But if you ask Whalen where she sees herself in five years, she’ll offer two scenarios.

In the first, she says, “I would love to see myself playing in the WNBA. Having some type of secure role, and being a player that other teams have to worry about.” In the second, she sees herself “killing it in my medical device sales role. Being a top competitor, top performer, living on the beach somewhere, and killing it in my social life, family life, work life.”

Either way, Whalen asserts, she’ll be happy — and if you talk to her about both scenarios long enough, you can tell that she actually means it.