The women’s basketball team coaches at The University of Texas have just accepted their youngest player yet. Texan phenom Deja Kelly, 13, will be suiting up as a Texas Longhorn. Once she graduates middle school and high school that is.
Following in her father’s footsteps, Darren Kelly a guard who played for the university in 1999 and 2001, took the offer from Texas during the Longhorns’ football victory over Iowa State on Oct. 18.
“It was my dream school because my dad went there,” she told the San Antonio Express-News. “I’ve been putting in the work.”
To have colleges recruit younger prospective student is not uncommon. Quarterback Zadock Dinkelmann, a friend of Kelly’s, committed to LSU in February while still in junior high.
Although the 5-foot-8 middle school teen cannot officially sign an official letter of intent until November 2019, she has has agreed to the offer, although it’s non-binding. Deja’s father would have preferred for her to go deeper into the recruiting process he told NBC’s Today Show. “Still we are confident in the decision,” her mom, Theresa Nunn, told ESPNW.
When Deja – who’s been playing basketball since the age of three – was asked if she might change her mind, she simply responded: “I don’t think so.”