Hoop Mom: Too Young for Colleges?

The mother of a freshman wonders if her daughter is too young to respond to letters from colleges.

My daughter played at a Penn State exposure tournament at age 13. The tournament was 15 and under, and I am receiving letters for her AAU schedule and her high school schedule. Since she is only a freshman, should I still send the information?

Wondering

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Dear Wondering:

Believe it or not, freshman year of high school is not too early to be thinking about college basketball opportunities. I posed your question to Chris Bown, head girls basketball coach at Seattle’s Lakeside High School. Bown recommends that you send your daughter’s schedules to give colleges as much lead time as possible to watch her.

Bown says that one of his players has her sights set on Yale, so she sent Yale coaches a copy of both her AAU and high school schedules. She also sent a schedule of a leadership/team-building wilderness adventure hike she attended. “The coaches at Yale replied that they could not fit her in last summer but will check her out this summer and during this current HS season,” Bown says.

Why send information about a non-basketball-related event? Coaches “get a better picture of her by knowing what else she is doing,” Bown notes.

Hoop Mom

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Teresa Wippel has been involved with select basketball for a number of years and is mom to Fusion post player Amanda Waldron. In her other life, she is a freelance writer and editor. To ask Teresa a question, email her at

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