Building Belonging: Khelsi Petigny ’22 Creates a Home Through Basketball

When Khelsi Petigny ’22 left Brewster after a standout academic and basketball career, she didn’t expect the sense of loss she’d feel at the University of San Francisco. She didn’t immediately make best friends, missed home, and—perhaps most acutely—couldn’t find her place in the sport that had always anchored her. Instead of stepping back, Khelsi leaned into the lessons Brewster had taught her. What happened next was transformative.

Khelsi Petigny felt fairly lonely when she first went to her college’s rec center to play basketball. It was October of her freshman year, and she had yet to find her place or her people. So she sought out a court, hopeful to reclaim the sense of camaraderie she’d felt at Brewster.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t there. Instead, she was the only girl on the court. She had to fight for a spot to play in the pickup games (especially difficult after a shoulder surgery her senior year at Brewster). “Having played organized basketball my entire life, I felt kind of lost,” she says.

So next, she looked into intramurals. This time, she found herself on a co-ed team fulfilling one of the two “mandated” female player roles, and no closer to a sense of belonging than when she started.

And just like that, she was out of options. At least, the existing ones.

“I was shocked to learn that my school didn’t have a club women’s basketball team,” Khelsi recalls. She contacted the club director to see what it would take to start one, and received a stack of forms. Khelsi returned sophomore year, alongside a few women from the intramural league, with a complete proposal covering budget, travel, and uniforms. “We just kind of winged it,” she admits. Their persistence paid off: the proposal was approved.

Thus began the project that would define her college experience: founding, captaining, and even coaching USF’s first women’s club basketball team. “Our first tryouts were amazing. We had more than 50 girls,” she recalls, still awed by the demand she’d uncovered at USF. “My assumption was that there must not be enough girls to have a club women’s team. But clearly that wasn’t the case.”

The inaugural season was a learning curve. Khelsi wore every hat: co-founder, president, coach, player, captain. “I learned I cannot do all those,” she laughs, though she’s grateful for the perspective it gave her.

The club team’s first season had a mixed record–5-5 overall–but the wins and losses were hardly the point. Khelsi had created a home for herself–and for others. And the second year solidified everything. Even when sidelined by a foot injury, Khelsi leaned into leadership as coach and mentor. “I was really just grateful to still be in it, and I was enjoying myself coaching,” she says. The squad, run entirely by students, was the only self-coached club team in California. (Fun fact: so new to the process, they didn’t know that they could hire a coach–but this minor oversight only made the experience more special.)

It’s also worth noting that their team was recognized as USF’s Rising Club of the Year Award in 2023, a huge milestone for a brand-new team. And for the 2024-25 year, their team was awarded the highest GPA among all club sports teams at USF.

“Brewster introduced me to the idea that it’s so much bigger than basketball,” Khelsi said. “That’s something we try to implement to our program.” Under Khelsi’s leadership, the team regularly does community service work. They also engage in discussions and projects for heritage months and their different identities.

“We can practice and we can play games, but that’s not what this is about,” Khelsi says. “This is a community. It’s so much more important than you think to have a place to call home, to have people to call family, and to have friends that share the same passion and mission with you. I think it’s essential.”

The roots of this leadership run deep. At Brewster, Khelsi learned that being on a team “wasn’t a question of whether we were going to value chemistry and family and respect on and off the court,” she says. “You can’t just go out there and play basketball. You have to trust each other, know each other, and want to do this for each other. Basketball is almost secondary.” She credits this philosophy to the reason for her Brewster team’s success, which won the NEPSAC Class C Championship her senior year.

It’s also key to her club’s success. In just their second season, the team earned a #2 seed in the California National Club Basketball Association (NCBBA) playoffs and won the California Regional Championship.

Still, Khelsi’s favorite moment wasn’t a win. After a regular game in February, she looked around at her club team–composed of players from a variety of high schools and basketball experiences–and the full extent of her impact hit her. “I ended up crying after this one game,” she recounts. “When I first got to school, that feeling of loneliness was so wild. Creating what I didn’t have, and providing that for others—I just felt overwhelmingly grateful.”

She takes pride in her legacy. “Knowing that we have freshmen who have grown up on our team, and they’re now entering their junior year, is awesome.  We’re preparing them for taking on this role when we all graduate.”

Khelsi, a psychology major, is already planning on pursuing a career in athletics after graduation–a decision that also has roots from her time at Brewster. During her spring season at Brewster, she worked with Brewster’s Athletics Operations Coordinator Drew Bridgeman. “That athletics job really cleared things up for me about how much I loved working in the realm of sports.”

She’s already finding sports outlets outside of college, coaching youth players in California and using every piece of wisdom Brewster gave her. She tells her girls: “If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your teammates, your parents… your little brother, your little sister, watching you, following you in your footsteps. That’s all that matters.”

For Khelsi, through every chapter of her basketball journey, one thing remains constant. Basketball may be the activity, but the real result is something much greater: a place where people come together, belong, and find a family that, like her Brewster bonds, never fades.