Growing up in Ballarat, Georgia Amoore enjoyed terrorising boys on the football field. She was so quick and elusive with a Sherrin in her hands, the boys often only had one option to slow her down.

“They’d grab my ponytail,” Amoore says, laughing.

The helplessness those boys felt as Amoore left them in her dust is now being replicated in college basketball arenas across the US. If you’re not acquainted with the 22-year-old point guard’s exploits for Virginia Tech, you soon will be; Amoore is Australia’s next basketball star.

Later this month Amoore will lead the Hokies into March Madness. The 68-team NCAA knockout tournament is the grand finale of the college basketball season. Last year Virgina Tech, fuelled by a record 23 three-pointers in five games by Amoore, made it to the semi-finals before being knocked out by eventual champions LSU. It was the first time they had made the final four and it was when Amoore’s legend in the US was minted.

“Going into the tournament this year, we’ll carry the lessons that we learned from last year, but we also know it is not going to be easy,” she says.

Women’s NCAA basketball is in a golden era, often drawing higher TV ratings in the US than men’s games with Iowa’s Caitlin Clark smashing all-time men’s and women’s scoring records. Amoore stands alongside Clark, LSU’s Angel Reese, USC’s JuJu Watkins, Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers and South Carolina’s Te-Hina Paopao as A-listers in this year’s tournament. Amoore was also named alongside Clark and Paopao as finalists for the Nancy Lieberman award for top college point guard.

Contributing to Amoore’s cult status is her height. In a league of giants, the Australian stands just 168cm tall, but offsets any size disadvantage with a deadly step-back three-pointer. She is also an inspirational floor general and happy to get physical.

“I think Aussie basketball in general is harder headed and rougher than US basketball,” she says. “We’re not afraid to put our bodies on the line and we’re playing for our teammates which helps us take hits and then get up again.”

Amoore was introduced to basketball at five years old – watching her cousin Keeley Frawley play at Ballarat’s Minerdome. When Frawley’s team ran into foul trouble and had to sit players, they asked if Amoore could make up the numbers. On came a tiny Amoore in her thongs (flip-flops), and the rest is history.

“I loved it and I’ve been playing ever since,” she says.

The key to Virgina Tech’s success this year’s NCAA Tournament likely rests with the fitness of the team’s other star, All-American centre Elizabeth Kitley, who went down with a knee injury last week. Together, Amoore and Kitley are a dynamic duo with the Australian bombing from outside and the American dominating the paint. They’re also best friends, with their bond forged when the pandemic hit in 2020. With their basketball season shut down, the Virginia Tech campus closed and Amoore unable to fly back to Australia, Kitley’s family invited her to stay at their home in North Carolina.

Kitley said she thought Amoore was “crazy” when she first walked into the locker room.

“She was one of the first Australians I knew, and she was dancing all the time, wild, making jokes and abrupt in a good way,” Kitley told reporters.

American fans have also fallen in love with her Australian charm.

“I just had to get my head out of my butt and be more aggressive,” Amoore told a US sideline reporter on live TV when describing her slow start in a win over the University of Miami last week.

Amoore is tipped to be a top 10 pick in April’s WNBA draft – one of the strongest drafts in the league’s history – if she elects not to return to Virginia Tech next season. She is also hoping to live a childhood dream to play for the Opals. Despite her high profile in the US and potent outside shot, Amoore has not been part of Sandy Brondello’s Australian team preparations ahead of the Paris Olympics.

“It’s definitely something that I really desire but the Opals have a great core group of girls and the ones that will be going to the Olympics have spent way more time with each other,” she says. “I respect those girls and I respect the coaching staff and if the opportunity arises, I will happily take it, but I’m also in a situation where I am in America and I can’t really go if they have a training camp on the other side of the world. I’ll just keep working hard and hopefully one day it happens.”

The Opals are not the only team in Amoore’s sights though – she doesn’t rule out one day playing for her beloved Geelong Cats in the AFLW. On a recent trip back to Australia, she went to a training session with the Cats’ men’s team, who presented her with a jersey – now one of her prized possessions. She immediately wore it to the park to kick the footy around.

“I love basketball and right now that’s my focal point, but playing in the AFLW is definitely something that I’d like to do,” she said. “Every recess and lunchtime in primary school I was out there playing footy with the boys and when I was 14, I joined my best mate’s boys team. I played until I was 15 or 16 when they said that I couldn’t play any more. I was in the midfield or front pocket, and loved grabbing the ball, sprinting, and bombing it. I never really had much direction, but I could get it on my foot pretty quick.”

That’s no surprise. Amoore’s release shooting a basketball is lightning quick. Could she use her kicking skills for Virginia Tech’s football team if they ever needed a punter on short notice? A few years back, Sydney’s Oscar Bradburn punted for the Hokies and almost 300 other Australians have punted for US colleges in recent years, so why not Amoore?

“I would love to!” Amoore says quickly.

So, if Virginia Tech suddenly needs a punter, they should call on Amoore. She could probably do it in thongs.