Grandview girls basketball’s Lauren Betts heads into 2021 with high goals
Lauren Betts’ list of accomplishments is likely going to outgrow her 6-foot-7 frame. The Grandview girls basketball standout was hard to miss (literally) during her freshman campaign, a campaign in which she averaged 12.7 points per game.
Now, less than two years later, she’s on the map as not just one of the top the recruits in her class, but the top recruit for all girls basketball players graduating in 2022.
She’s accomplished a lot and she still has plenty of time left to accomplish even more.
It’s a scary thought considering how much of a difference she makes for the Wolves when she’s on the court. Growing up, she was bouncing around Europe watching her dad, Andrew, play pro ball. She developed a natural love for the game and shortly after her freshman season at Grandview, she started figuring out just how high her ceiling in the sport was.
“Once I made the USA (U16) team, I knew my life would change,” Betts said. “I knew everything would be different. After my freshman year I just went with the flow of things and kept working so I didn’t expect anything. I just kept working hard.”
Height can’t be taught in a basketball player, but true fundamentals of the game can develop in any player. Betts has clear advantage as a post player when it comes to her size, but it’s her continuously polishing game that has really made her the No. 1 recruit in the nation.
“The touch and the fell that she has, that’s one of the things that separates her,” Grandview coach Josh Ulitzky said. “Typically you don’t see kids with that height that coordinated. That is the thing that has been so intriguing through the course of her recruitment.”
That recruitment led to a big-time decision for the high school junior. She announced on Twitter this week that she’ll head to Palo Alto and join three other Colorado graduates in Ashten Prechtel (Discovery Canyon), Fran Belibi (Regis Jesuit) and Jana Van Gytenbeek (Cherry Creek) and play for the Stanford Cardinal.
For the better part of three years now, Stanford has simply walked into the state, taken some its best stuff and walked right back out the door.
“The academics are huge over there,” Betts said. “We have a lot of smart girls here in Colorado.”
And it seems those smart girls have the ability to play some hoops as well.
“Colorado girls are definitely underrated,” Betts said. “I don’t think we’re super cocky, we don’t have to talk about ourselves and we don’t have to hype ourselves up. We just work hard and don’t really want the attention.”
Moving forward, Betts is going to have plenty of attention. It starts next week when teams officially begin practice for the upcoming season. Grandview was one of just four teams to officially advance to a state title game last spring before the tournaments were called off due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coming so close and not being able to close the season out is something that Betts and her teammates have on their minds as play is set begin on Jan. 25.
“We are not messing around,” Betts said. “We all talked and we are starting the season strong because we don’t have time to settle into things. We have to get after it right away.”
