Olivia Olson was a recent guest on a (local?) podcast called Backyard Sports. It's worth a listen, because she's fairly open, but also exceptionally humble. She covered NIL, trying out and playing for Team USA, and a whole bunch of other topics that I found interesting. As far as recruiting goes, she said her #1 priority was playing close to her family, but also mentioned her top picks for schools and the U was not among them.
It's less than 30 minutes, so an easy listen (though the hosts seemed to know nothing about women's basketball).
Thank you! Some excerpts from the interview:
Olson wanted to stay in the Midwest especially because her parents can come to a lot of games. “That was important to me.”
Olson was asked if anything else made her choose Michigan over other schools, besides location:
“I have such a great relationship with the coaches at Michigan. And one of my best friends is going there. She’s a year older than me. So that played a pretty good role in it. Just kind of their… they believe in me a lot. They also give constructive criticism when they’re at my games. Like they’ll send me three pages of scout notes, like what they think, like what I need to improve on. No other school really did that for me. Like the genuine want for me to do good. How they believed in me. That really played a role."
Duke, Michigan, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, UConn were favorites.
When asked if she knew Paige Bueckers, said they knew each other, had talked to her. Olson said she wanted to go her own way and not follow in Paige Buecker’s steps at UConn.
Plays with MN Fury. In the summer, “I focus on training and weight lifting. I do those two every day. And then we also have AAU practice.” Trains with a trainer, the owner at 43 Hoops.
“I got my first offer in 8th grade, like January, during the high school season. That was from Minnesota, like, my hometown team. I started to get a lot more from AAU traveling. Yea, it was a surprise. I didn’t expect it at all. I was just so happy to be able to call her, the head coach there. But then they offered me and I was like, ‘Wait. What?’ I paused for a minute. And she told me again. I didn’t believe her even after I hung up. And then I went and told my parents. They didn’t believe me either.”
Then came floods of offers and contacts from universities.
