Background
Sophie Carrigill was born on 19 January 1994.
Sophie Carrigill was born on 19 January 1994.
She attended Wakefield Girls" High School, where she played netball, hockey and tennis.
During a swimming trip in the United States in 2010, she was a passenger in a car that crashed into a tree. Despite being the only person in the vehicle wearing a seat belt, she suffered terrible injuries. She spent two months in hospital, where her spleen and gall bladder were removed.
Her kidney was damaged, and she fractured her T6 thoracic vertebrae, leaving her paralysed from the waist down.
She subsequently spent two months in rehabilitation in the spinal unit at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield. Carrigill took up playing wheelchair basketball.
Within a year of playing her first game, she was selected to represent the eventual silver medallists Yorkshire in the U19 event at The Lord’s Taverners National Junior Championships in 2012.She played for the Leeds Spiders in Divisions 1 and 3 of the BWB National League, and the Coyotes in the Standard Life Great Britain Women's National League. That year she took her A-levels in Psychology, Physical Education, and English Language, and entered the University of Worcester, where she studied Sports Psychology.
In April 2013, Carrigill made her international debut in a tournament against the Netherlands.
She went on to represent Britain at the European Championships in Frankfurt later the same year, winning bronze, and was captain of the team at the World Wheelchair Basketball Championship in Toronto the following year. She played in the 2015 Women"s U25 Wheelchair Basketball World Championship in Beijing, winning gold. 2013: Bronze at European Championships (Frankfurt, Germany).
