Brady excited to join her ‘dream school’
UConn women’s basketball freshman Isuneh “Ice” Brady has wanted to wear the red, white and blue for Team USA since she was 13 years old.
Six days after she turned 18 this month, Brady made her first Team USA roster for the 2022 FIBA U18 Americas Championship in Argentina. Two weeks later, on June 19 in Buenos Aires, she won her first gold medal, helping the U.S. to its 10th-straight gold in FIBA U18 championships.
Brady, a 6-foot-3 post player from San Diego, turns the page to another chapter of her basketball career Tuesday, joining her new UConn teammates on campus for the first time.
Over the course of her first Team USA experience and through her final years in high school, Brady said she’s learned she is strong enough to grow through life’s challenges. That was the case during her attempt to make the U.S. roster and with dealing with pressure associated with committing to UConn as a sophomore in high school.
As Brady starts summer workouts with UConn she knows she’s ready to tackle whatever challenges arise.
“I’ve been preparing since I was a sophomore,” Brady told Hearst Connecticut Media over the phone from Argentina on Monday. “It’s like, ‘OK, now it’s finally going to happen.’ I’m just excited to get out there.”
A GOLD-MEDAL DEBUT
Brady was 13 when she first tried out for the Team USA U17 team. As one of the younger players trying out and still fairly new to basketball — she first started at age 7 at a local YMCA — she wasn’t overly disappointed she didn’t make the cut. She tried out again a couple years later for the U16 team, but still failed to make the roster.
This summer, she told herself she would do everything she could to earn a roster spot — even if it meant missing the first few weeks of UConn’s summer workout session.
Team USA head coach Joni Taylor (Texas A&M) warned her players as they began training camp in Colorado that they would need to work extremely hard, but not to be afraid because they were capable of doing hard things.
“During tryouts, because I was gonna do whatever it took to make the team, I just remember running up