Before she could read, Layton Christian's Jasmine Porter understood the language of basketball. At age 3, her dad and the coach of the family, Bobby, dragged her to his basketball practices and made her race his players in sprints. Even after she darted past a solid chunk of players, not even her dad could've guessed she'd be going into her senior year as the best player in Utah.
Fifteen years, a school scoring record and an early commitment to San Diego State later, she can definitely stake her claim. But if you ask her, she doesn't know what's all the hype about.
"The whole fact that I'm kind of good at this hasn't hit me yet," Porter said. "I'm still not a that stage yet. Knowing that a school wants me is great, but I still think everyday I can get better."
Coming off a junior year where she averaged 19.3 points per game, the 6-foot-2 guard made her commitment to SDSU this fall. As the No. 1 recruit out of Utah in ESPNU's top 100 girls' basketball recruits, she rejected offers from Syracuse, Colorado, Villanova, UNLV, and Utah State before becoming an Aztec.
"Ever since I knew you could go to college for basketball I wanted to," said Porter, "I didn't want to pay for school."
Her dad, who is Layton Christian boys' basketball coach and director of student development, has been steering her daughter to the right school since she's been getting college looks her freshman year. After wining his own state championship with his son and sending him off to Portland State in 2007, he knows her competitive upbringing helped earn the full ride.
"We have a family that just goes out and plays all time, we're always competing in something," Bobby said. "We didn't know if it was going to be volleyball or basketball but we knew she was going to do something. She just wants to try out college basketball and she found out she'd be a good fit at San Diego State."
Basketball pedigree runs in the Porter family. Her dad played at Tennessee Tech before playing professionally briefly overseas in Europe. Her brother, B.J., plays for Portland State, and her mom even played competitively in high school. After wining the 2A state title in volleyball, Porter turned down interest from North Carolina, Penn State and Oregon to keep the basketball career going.
As far as her choice of school, Bobby finds SDSU to be a perfect fit for Porter and knows that the competition to play early will just fuel her daughter.
"It's a situation where their competition level is just higher in SDSU," Bobby said. "They have very athletic girls where she knows she's going to have to work hard every day to get a chance to play. She also knows their very athletic so she can't take days off. She wants a challenge and I think SDSU is going to be a great challenge for her."
Jasmine has sought out challenges in sports her entire life and her dad picked up on her competitive nature early on. When she was 4, Jasmine picked up a basketball and played pick-up with some family members. When one of her cousins elbowed her in the face, she ran to her dad crying. Instead of whining, she demanded him to fix the boo-boo so she could get back out there and play again. She's played with the boys ever since, and even played baseball when she was younger until being forced out.
Now her primary focus is on basketball and improving from last year. LCA finished fifth in Region 14 and ousted in first round of the playoffs by eventual champions Richfield, 70-26.
New head coach Shara Fernandes is not bashful about getting the ball to Porter and knows he star can be the biggest asset when she mixes it up to her teammates.
"She is definitely a big asset and I have high expectations of her," Fernandes said. "She's going to put on the points. Jasmine is the kind of player that's going to make everyone else better. She's going to rub off on everybody and we'll all share the glory.
As a senior, she knows she'll have to carry the majority of the load for her team, and she's done it before.
In eighth grade, with a subpar squad, she scored 27 of 31 points in a championship game to will out a win. The feeling of losing has killed Jasmine for almost a year now and this season, she knows exactly what it'll take to make it go away.
"Last year killed me cause I'm not used to losing, and it was heartbreaking that it happened, but it also made me better," she said. "Knowing that I'm a senior this year and that my leadership role is very important. I need to put my team on my back and say, 'Let's go for a ride'."
