Like any standout who plays for her high school basketball team, Jaden Newman is receiving attention from college programs. The catch: Newman is just 9 years old, but that hasn't stopped the University of Miami women's basketball team from trying to recruit her.
Newman made headlines earlier this year when she started playing point guard for her school's variety basketball team while she was only in the fourth grade. The Orlando Downey Christian School student has been averaging 14.8 points per game and 7.5 assists a game.
According to a report from USA Today, assistant coach Derrick Gibbs called a family friend of the Newman family earlier this month to get in touch. The team then sent an official recruiting letter to Newman, and invited her to take an unofficial recruiting trip to the school.
"They showed me around. They showed me their basketball court and they showed me like all the campus, it was nice," Newman told Local 10.
Though, naturally, Newman has dreams have playing for Connecticut, of course, so the U's effort may be for naught. Though, they have a lot of time to change her mind.
Newman follows in the footsteps of her brother Julian Newman. He started playing for Downey Christian School's variety boys basketball team when he was just 11 years-old back in 2012. If this still doesn't quite make sense for you, well, maybe you should know that the Newman's father, Jamie Newman, is the head coach of the boys' team at the K-12 private school. It's also a school of just 300 total students.
"If it's a 9-year-old prodigy math whiz and he's taking college courses, it's okay. So when it comes to athletics, it's the same thing," Jamie Newman told Local 10. "It's not kind of a hobby it's a passion and a love that she has for the game."
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