In her spare time, Jayden McClain, one of the youngest NCAA Division I girls basketball recruits in the country, likes to get creative with things other than her favorite sport.
“She likes to make her own stuff,” said her mom, Samantha McClain. “I liked drawing a lot. She likes to do that and other things.”
Jayden McClain likes to dance. She has tumbling experience among her gymnastic endeavors. She loves being with friends and family. McClain loves being with her teammates. She likes hanging out in her bedroom. She likes to dream. McClain loves thinking about life’s possibilities, which are many and varied.
The 6-foot-5 seventh-grader is receiving minutes for the Ryle High School girls varsity basketball team, but she already has verbal offers from at least six colleges.
She is an otherwise normal middle-school student who likes to capture the moment by dabbling in photography among other things.
“I like to take pictures,” McClain said.
Her main focus is basketball. McClain is the second-ranked college prospect in the country in her class of 2029 by Elite48 Worldwide.
McClain recently announced she received another verbal college offer, this one from Xavier University. She received an offer from Kentucky in December. She also has offers from Ohio State, Mississippi State, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, which provided her first verbal offer in October.
McClain turned 13 with a January birthday. She was making college visits at age 12. She has visited Georgia, Georgia Tech, Illinois and Tennessee among others.
With each offer, the youngster receives more and more publicity. The press clippings are piling up. More people are talking about the outsized basketball player, who outgrew her schoolmates long ago. She has outgrown virtually everybody in her family other than her father. Anthony McClain is a 7-foot former Cincinnati Bearcats player who played with the Harlem Globetrotters. Her mom is 6-4 and played college basketball at Cincinnati State.
Mom and especially dad had their fair share of publicity as college basketball players. Their daughter is going to blow them out of the water regarding publicity well before she steps foot on a college campus for good. It’s already happening.
“I try not to pay attention to it,” said Jayden, who received the bulk of her early offers as a 12-year-old.
As her world slowly changes and her new normal evolves into a newer normal, the very tall teenager prefers turning her attention to the arts.
“I like basketball a lot. Both of my parents played so I grew up around basketball,” she said. “But I like to take the pictures and I like to paint. I have about 10 paintings at home.”
The last one she finished was about a month ago.
“It’s a nature painting,” Jayden said
She likes painting so much her mom has helped her secure painting classes on boat rides.
“We were around Louisville on a small body of water. One of her paintings was on a boat so it’s a water scene,” Samantha McClain said. “She liked it. She had it hanging up in her bedroom but we’re redoing her bedroom right now so it’s hanging just outside her bedroom in the hallway.”
Mom likes to keep things as normal and consistent as possible for her daughter as both enter a new world of competing basketball offers, competing coaches and what is sure to become a deluge of interest over the next five years. But the bedroom had to be redone. Jayden was outgrowing it. Nine other paintings need to be displayed somewhere.
“I like to look at them,” the young player said.
The more college coaches get an eyeful of McClain, the more they like her. Some already see her as poetry in motion, especially at such a young age. Some see her elevating the game to a new artform. In that sense, she is a picture-perfect example of what a tall basketball prodigy looks like.
Jayden hopes to draw upon all her experiences to reach her goal: The highest level of play possible for a basketball player. That’s why she likes to dream.
“I’m probably going to start next year,” she said. “It’s been really fun. We have a really energetic team.”
Ryle, coached by former high school and college forward and center Katie Haitz, boasts a pair of college-bound post players in Quinn Eubank (Belmont) and Sarah Baker (Youngstown State). There is no shortage of role models and tutelage for McClain, who also has her parents’ advice to absorb.
“It’s a big advantage for her,” said Haitz, who has sent nearly 20 Ryle Raiders to college programs. “She has a lot of people who have her best interests at heart. Her parents, her AAU team, her coaches and us. We are blessed to have six senior veterans to help her, who have been in her position as a young player and being called up to the varsity early and being a college recruit. We obviously want what’s best for her and keep things as normal as possible at school because she is still very young. Personally, I think she’s doing well with it.”
McClain was fine on the basketball court until she suffered a shoulder strain and missed a spate of games for the Raiders (12-7). She has since returned. In her first 11 games, she scored 24 points and grabbed 40 rebounds for averages of 2.2 points per game and 3.6 rebounds, which ranks fifth on the team despite McClain’s lack of minutes. McClain also averages 1.6 blocks. She made 11 of her first 21 shots from the field for 52.4% shooting accuracy against much older and more experienced girls.
“She has a lot of skills and they’re still developing,” Haitz said. “I have to tell you, it’s fun to have that height around, on and off the court. I was always one of the tallest girls. My mom is tiny. I’ve been her height since eighth grade, and I had to get used to looking down at her after I grew up. It’s weird, and with a lot of girls now I’m looking at them pretty much in the eye.”
Not with Jayden.
“It’s nice to have a girl to look up to,” Haitz said. “And she’s way up there. She can do so much with her height and she can control her body despite being so tall. She can score inside and she can rebound and she can shoot and she can pass. It’s fun to watch her block shots. She has great anticipation. She can do the important things like run the floor and screen. She’s a great athlete and this is just her first varsity season. She had been playing with the freshmen and junior varsity.”
With growth plates still open, McClain is probably going to get taller. She’s definitely going to get better and stronger, especially after working out at Jordan Nevels Fitness in Newport.
“Jayden is physically imposing and a very big obstacle in the paint,” Haitz said.
She’s also pretty good with a paintbrush. Soon, she’ll have a bedroom full of paintings to prove it.