Social media star, Huskies aspirant
Like many girls who grow up playing basketball, 14-year-old Jaden Newman dreams of playing for UConn.
The freshman at Orlando’s Downey Christian School patterns her game off of former Huskies guard and current WNBA star Diana Taurasi. Despite standing only 5’2”, Newman also enjoys watching 6’4” Breanna Stewart, another former Husky, in the WNBA.
But Newman is not like other freshmen in several ways. For starters, this is far from her first season on varsity. She first suited up for Downey Christian’s varsity team at age 8. “They didn’t have a point guard,” Newman said in a recent phone interview, “and my dad was like, ‘How about Jaden?’” By that point, Newman had been dominating older competition for a few years at the local YMCA, and that was enough for her dad, Jamie—who also happens to be Downey Christian’s coach.
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It wasn’t quite enough for Jaden at first; she admitted to being scared when her dad first floated the idea. Her new teammates, too, were initially skeptical, she said: “The other girls didn’t know that I was good at basketball, and they were like, ‘This little girl’s coming on the team?’ But after they’d seen me play a game and stuff, they were like, ‘Wow, she’s actually good.’” Newman came around quickly, too: “I tried out a game, and then it was just fun. It was just easy to me and I loved doing it ever since.”
It’s safe to say that the game continues to come easily to her. Newman averaged over 15 points per game as a fifth-grader, over 30 as a sixth- and seventh-grader, and over 45 last year as an eighth-grader. In January 2018, she scored 70 points in one game, tying a national record with 17 made 3-pointers.
“I knew I had a lot ,” she said, “probably 50, but I didn’t know I had 70. … during the game, some people were like, ‘One more, one more!’ Like one more three-pointer, for 18, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know what they were talking about.” Asked what it felt like to score 70 points on better than 60 percent shooting, Newman said, “It feels good, like, if you’re in the moment and you’re feeling it and you’re hot, you just keep shooting … the game was just coming to me.”
“Just keep shooting” could be Newman’s unofficial motto. The secret to her success is nothing glamorous, just hours and hours of practice with her dad and her older brother, Julian, who is a junior at Downey Christian. Each sibling makes 500 shots per day, including 300 3-pointers, from various spots on the court. They also do early-morning strength and conditioning workouts with their dad. On top of all of that, Julian and Jaden somehow find time to play one-on-one. Jaden told me that “he wins some, I win some. I’d say even,” but last month, in a video with Julian for Whistle’s “No Days Off” documentary series on extraordinary young athletes, Jaden’s competitive side came out. “I think I beat you more times,” she told Julian.
Jaden’s scoring is what leaps off the page, but over her varsity career, the point guard has also averaged better than seven assists, five steals, and four rebounds per game. She admitted that it can be frustrating when people focus only on her scoring. She and her dad work diligently on all aspects of her game, and as a result, she said, “I don’t only score the ball. I can do it all. … I know basketball and I know how to play defense and get tough steals and pass the ball.”
College coaches have taken notice of Jaden’s all-around talents. She received her first scholarship offer at nine years old from the University of Miami (Florida). “I thought I was in a dream or something,” she said of receiving the offer. “But it was real, and then we went on the campus and we took a tour and stuff, and we saw the gym. It was fun.” She’s gotten several more offers since, but is in no rush to make a decision. She calls UConn her “dream school” and will be rooting for the Huskies to win their 12th NCAA championship next month in Tampa.
Jaden’s basketball skills have also generated attention from the mainstream and popular media. She appeared on “The Queen Latifah Show” as a fourth-grader and the aforementioned “No Days Off” series on YouTube this year. But her favorite appearance was in a Foot Locker commercial at age 10, in which she beat Steph Curry in a 3-point shooting contest. She said Curry’s reaction to losing was “shock. I don’t think he knew that I could shoot, like, that well.”
Early in her career, Newman said, she was underestimated, which makes sense given her young age and short stature. But her on-court performance and the Foot Locker commercial ensured that word would eventually get out. “Now, mostly people know who I am,” she said, recounting how she sometimes gets recognized when she’s at a restaurant or bowling alley with her friends. “Sometimes I wish that no one knew who I was,” she said of the attention. “But I like it most of the time.”
With three full seasons left to play of high school basketball, Newman has a lot of scoring left to do before she heads off to college and then, hopefully, to the WNBA. “My goals for the rest of the season just to keep working hard and keep winning and scoring a lot of points and maybe, hopefully, setting the record for the threes,” she told me. Despite her dominance at the high school level, she is not one to get caught looking ahead to college. “Every year, the competition … gets more and more competitive. It’s just fun for me. I love playing high school basketball.” She also loves playing for her dad, who has coached her for her entire career. But she’s not concerned about playing for a new coach in college, calling herself “coachable” and voicing confidence that she will develop a strong rapport with her college coach.
Before she heads off to the college of her choice, though, there’s at least one more thing Newman needs to check off of her bucket list. “I’ve never been to a WNBA game,” she told me. “I want to go to one. … That’d be awesome.”
Almost as awesome as playing in one, that is.
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