BYU Cougars guard Paisley Harding (13) strikes round Gonzaga Bulldogs guard Abby O’Connor (4) in the course of the closing sport of the 2022 WCC girls’s basketball match on the Orleans Enviornment in Las Vegas on Tuesday, March 8, 2022. Kristin Murphy, Deseret Information
How’s this for a “welcome to the professionals” expertise?
As former BYU girls’s basketball star Paisley Harding has begun her skilled hoops journey by being invited to coaching camp of the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, she has been assigned a locker in between two of essentially the most well-known girls’s basketball gamers on the planet.
These gamers can be Sue Chook and Breanna Stewart, who've mixed to tally six WNBA championships, 15 All-Star appearances and 7 group Olympic gold medals, with Chook additionally being the WNBA’s all-time assists chief and Stewart successful WNBA Finals MVP twice.
And there, proper in the course of them, is Harding, who signed a coaching camp contract final week in hopes of creating the group.
“It’s fairly loopy,” Harding stated in an interview offered by the Storm. “I imply, my locker’s proper between the 2 of them, and it’s sort of intimidating strolling to the locker room, however they’ve been nothing however good and keen to assist out, nevertheless it actually is surreal with the ability to be in the identical presence as them.”
“Simply attempting to study as a lot as I can from them.”
Beside attempting to recover from being too starstruck, Harding stated the early days of camp (it opened Sunday) are going effectively.
“I really feel good,” she stated. “There’s loads of completely different ideas and completely different performs thrown at us, however that’s the kind of basketball I prefer to play.
“I like realizing what’s happening, so simply studying it, it’ll be a course of, nevertheless it’s enjoyable for me.”
Harding, who completed her profession at BYU as this system’s all-time chief in video games performed and sixth in scoring, stated her time in Provo actually helped put together her for this subsequent step in her profession.
“In the event you’re going to play at a excessive degree, you need to know methods to work onerous, and I believe school is the one step under this that sort of teaches you that,” she stated.
“There’s an enormous step from school to the WNBA, nevertheless it’s simply regularly working onerous, realizing and studying your ideas and simply preparing for it.”
An added bonus for Harding on this expertise is that it’s going down in Seattle, lower than an hour away from the place she grew up in Everett.
“It feels very nice,” she stated. “I sort of really feel like a hometown hero nearly for the women again in Everett. ... it’s very nice that I obtained to return again to Seattle and even be invited to a coaching camp.
“I really feel actually blessed to have the ability to do this.”