The process would have looked a lot different . So I think that it's super important whenever you're going through a recruiting process , whether it's in the portal or whether it's in high school , that you are super respectful to anyone who's giving you an opportunity to play at that level . Overall , I mean , The portal is just a lot different than high school because in high school , you know , you have 4 years to essentially research and talk to coaches , talk to players on the team , where in the portal you enter maybe in April .
So luckily that process wasn't too difficult for me because coaches would send me letters or reach out to me and I was able to then have that dialogue directly back to them . My mom runs one of the biggest AU programs in New England and so she has a lot of great relationships with different college coaches and so having her help me navigate that process too is super helpful and You know , for some other teammates who maybe had a different journey , they were reaching out to schools or emailing schools on their own , and I think that is something that is super critical to just remember in the recruiting process is that truly every single player's journey is entirely different . My journey .
And so just trying to get enough protein in and , you know , we're really lucky at this level to have so much education and so many resources , so I just try to take as full of advantage of it as I can . Yeah , so in high school , in terms of my recruiting process and just getting recognized by college coaches , I was pretty fortunate to have an AAU program that played on the Under Armour circuit . So we were constantly traveling all around the country , all throughout high school , playing in front of tons of different college coaches since I was probably in 7th grade .
And again , I was really lucky to have great people around me who were advocating for me and also who were just giving me advice and talking to different . Coaches and helping me figure out what would be the best fit for me , but I will say I think something that was crucial to my portal process the first time around and the second time around was just keeping really strong relationships with coaches that I said no to the first time . A lot of coaches that reached out to me this last time that I was in the transfer portal , I had said no to in high school and the second time in the portal , but I think that doing it in a respectful way and Making sure that they know how much I value them and appreciate them even if that wasn't the place that I ended up choosing to play at was really important because I still feel like they know who I am as a person and I recognize and valued who they were as people outside of just being college basketball coaches .
And so , you know , my process was particularly smooth , and I didn't have too much stress navigating it , but you also just never know what could happen . I ended up being in the transfer portal twice and so you might not always get the decision right on the first try , but I think that what you just have to do in the recruiting process is trust your gut and go with what feels like home to you and what feels like the best situation . Just being in college and playing for 3 different universities , transferring twice has been a very unexpected journey , I will say .
