RIVERSIDE, Mo. — Fewer than 70 girls across the country received an invite to the USA Basketball women’s youth national team trials, but three are from the Kansas City area.
Olathe South’s Eve Long and Park Hill South’s Addison Bjorn leave Thursday morning for the U17 trials in Colorado Springs, where Blue Valley North’s Aubrey Shaw participated in the U18 trials last weekend.
“It’s just a great experience to be able to be invited and compete against such talented girls all across the country,” said Shaw, a veteran of multiple USA Basketball trials.
USA Basketball camps aren’t new for Bjorn either. She’s participated in the last two Junior National Team camps and made the U16 squad that won the FIBA Americas U16 Championship last season in Mexico.
“It was a grind,” Bjorn said. “It was a lot of hard work and dedication, but it was a lot of fun. I got to play basketball with my best friends.”
She also got a gold medal to show for that effort.
“It’s in my room,” Bjorn said. “I actually have my jersey framed and I have it (the medal) dropping over the side.”
Shaw — who was among 26 players, including 14 from the class of 2025, invited to the USA Women’s U18 National Team trials last weekend — and Long live fewer than 10 miles apart.
Long, who just finished her freshman year, is thrilled to be walking the same path as Shaw, who just finished her junior year.
“Last year, one of my goals was to make the 17U Blue Star team for Eclipse, which is now part of MoKan,” Long said. “Aubrey’s always been on that team, so I always looked up to her as a role model.”
Long also is thrilled to have a fellow Kansas City-area player in Bjorn among the 43 players invited to the U17 trials.
“Addison’s a great person and she’s very kind,” Long said. “I’m really happy that I have her to talk to and I can talk to her about Kansas stuff that she would understand instead of feeling like an outsider.”
Bjorn is eager to welcome a fellow Kansas City-area basketball player to an elite sorority.
“I’m definitely going to talk to her,” Bjorn said. “I don’t know her that well personally, but coming from Kansas City, you’ve got to support those (girls) and she’s a great young player.”
Bjorn said the USA Basketball trials may actually be tougher than the international competition that follows.
“Trials is a lot harder, because you’re competing against all of the girls in America that got selected,” she said. “There’s great talent across the board.”
She said the speed and physicality of the game, as well as the quality of competition, ramps up at the national and international levels.
Long hasn’t experienced it before, but she insists she’s ready.
“I’m honestly not really that nervous, because I don’t know what to expect, so I’m not scared,” she said. “I’m just more excited that I get this opportunity to go.... I’ve grown up always watching the Olympics and I would watch girls basketball and I’d always be like, ‘I want to be one of those girls one day.’ The fact that I can do U17 is a dream come true.”
Shaw was not picked for the 12-player team, which will compete in the 2024 FIBA U18 Women’s AmeriCup next month in Bucaramanga, Colombia.
If Bjorn or Long make the U17 team, they will compete in the 2024 FIBA U17 Women’s World Cup, which is scheduled for mid-July in Mexico.
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