It’s a Tuesday evening exterior of downtown Los Angeles and I’m in a half-empty Galen Heart on the College of Southern California campus. The entire place smells like movie-theater popcorn, sticky spilled soda, and, vaguely, sweat. The cheerleaders leaping up and down on the court docket, making an attempt to amp up the considerably sleepy crowd, seem like they may cross for center schoolers. That is, in unmistakable and nearly caricatured style, a university campus. However there’s a sure participant on the ground, with an outsized bulbous bun atop her head, who’s glowing a bit of otherwise than everybody round her. She strikes so fluidly, will get to her spots on the ground with such ease. It’s, frankly, simply so very clear that she is working in a unique echelon than her friends. Even for those who didn’t inform me JuJu Watkins was a budding celebrity, I’d realize it.
This yr specifically, JuJu (authorities title: Judea Skies) Watkins’ stardom is markedly transitioning from bud to full bloom. You’d be hard-pressed to discover a stretch of street in Los Angeles with out the USC sophomore’s picture on a Nike billboard, or a business block throughout a nationwide NBA broadcast with out her State Farm advert spot. With Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese having moved onto the WNBA final yr, she’s arguably the most important remaining title in school basketball, males’s or girls’s, and her resumé is already spectacular: Gatorade Nationwide Participant of the 12 months, McDonald’s All-American Sport MVP, Unanimous First-Staff All American, WBCA Freshman of the 12 months, the record goes on and on.
When Watkins, from the south Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts, declared in fall 2022 that she could be attending her hometown USC, it was a seismic second in school sports activities. The Trojans’ girls’s basketball program had fallen out of favor with recruits, and out of relevancy, since profitable back-to-back nationwide championships through the mid-80s. They hadn’t even reached the Candy Sixteen since 1994. However Watkins wasn’t afraid of the problem to revive the legacy established by gamers like Cheryl Miller and Lisa Leslie, and her arrival instantly proved impactful. The primary feminine highschool athlete to signal a cope with Nike lived as much as each little bit of the hype and did so instantly. She completed second within the nation in factors per sport (27.1) her first season, behind solely Clark, whereas main the Trojans to the Pac-12 event title and their first Elite Eight look in 30 years. Seemingly in a single day, USC’s repute as a university basketball powerhouse and vacation spot for high-school expertise had been restored.
Watkins’ off-court persona is nearly disarmingly unassuming; she’s extremely soft-spoken and carries herself with the calm and aura of somebody properly past her 19 years. We bond over shared music style: she loves Steve Lacy, Faye Webster and Clairo (she lists Terrapin as her favourite music, a deep minimize positive to impress even essentially the most discerning of music snobs).
A self-described “introvert”, dwelling within the immense highlight she’s gathered over the previous couple of years has include a pointy studying curve. “I believe one of many crazier issues is simply being house and going to locations you go to on a regular basis, and slowly realizing that persons are beginning to discover you extra. It’s a blessing and a curse, but it surely’s cool,” she says, as we chat throughout her bus trip to a sport in Wisconsin, of what has been the most important adjustment to her newfound notoriety. “The posh of dwelling in LA is folks encounter like, you already know, I wouldn’t say well-known, however folks like that on a regular basis,” she says. “So I believe for me it’s extra chill, in comparison with once we journey to different locations. I stroll round with my headphones on, going to class like an everyday scholar.”
She’s decidedly not an everyday scholar, although she continues to be in school (I joke that she’s dwelling a Hannah Montana existence, which elicits a chuckle), however Watkins doesn’t appear fazed by the life disruption, understanding that it’s a bundle cope with each following her personal goals, and serving to to additional the expansion of the game she loves. “I simply stay my life,” she shrugs. “I’ve loopy experiences, however I believe it’s truthfully cool, it’s only a testomony to the place girls’s basketball goes, and I believe it helps develop the game.”
And the game is rising exponentially. I ask her what she makes of all of the nationwide consideration girls’s basketball has gotten during the last yr or so, with the rise of Clark, Reese and a number of different younger expertise elevating the profile of the WNBA. “It’s undoubtedly well-deserved, I believe. A very long time coming for girls’s sports activities and girls’s basketball particularly,” she says. “I’m simply grateful to be on this house at the moment. As a result of truthfully, I believe timing is every thing. And to be in school basketball now … it’s simply tremendous totally different. In a great way.”
I ask Watkins, who says she began to take basketball “severely” on the ripe outdated age of 12, how she retains her toes on stable floor when it appears like she’s surrounded by a storm of consideration and flashbulbs always. “I’m grateful to have my household. I believe they undoubtedly preserve me grounded,” she says. “After which, I believe, simply form of having my very own house. I’m introverted, so every time the world form of feels prefer it’s going loopy, I’ll simply go to my sofa and watch my present”–that present is presently Severance, she says–“and simply form of tune every thing out. However ‘grounded’ is tremendous simple for me, as a result of it’s simply how I used to be raised.”
On Thursday evening, Watkins and the sixth-ranked Trojans will host the UCLA Bruins, the No 1 workforce within the nation for 12 straight weeks and the final undefeated workforce in main school basketball. The hype across the sport, the primary of two extremely anticipated matchups between the crosstown rivals, is a real testomony to the turnaround that Watkins’ presence within the Los Angeles basketball scene has spearheaded. Between her generational expertise and her impressively down-to-earth perspective, Watkins is destined for a skyward ascension. School superstardom is just the start.
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