Written in conjunction with Great River School Student, Jamal Randle, Class of 2025

Jamal is an 11th grader at Great River School with big dreams and goals in mind. Let’s learn a little about Jamal!

My first memory of touching a basketball was when i was 2! When I began playing basketball seriously was fourth grade, I was really talented & it felt like it was “too easy”. That was really because of training with my dad & having a older brother that pushed me to go hard in every drill. Once I got to 7th grade I decided to play high school basketball. My brother was a big help in assisting me during that time, and I was the assistant the year before so I was familiar with everybody & I was a surprise to all of the older guys. 8th grade was covid year, I only played half of that year & one game scored 30 in a JV game!

Freshman year was my breakout year, It was my first year playing varsity, I was starting & after getting all of the nervousness out of my system, I surprised everyone including myself. I give props to my parents, they were really supportive & told me things I did well & could improve on & that really helped me succeed. My brother was also a big help in being blunt with me about the goods & bads that I could’ve done better. I ended that by fracturing my hip. It was a very long, rough, and difficult process. That led to my sophomore year, which was super rough, I think it was a okay year, but not my best.

This year has started off good, we’re currently 4-5 after coming off of a 5-16 year, so major improvements & I’ve been playing amazingly well. If the tracking app had the correct averages I would currently be 15th In the state in scoring. I believe that this year has been my best so far, I wish we could’ve had a record to show that, but I’m proud of my improvements considering I spent a lot of time over the summer going to the gym almost 4 times a week.

Anyways, aside from basketball, if I’m not doing homework I usually am playing video games. Some games I play are 2k, Madden, Call Of Duty, Fortnite, etc. I recently started getting back into [streaming on] youtube, I still haven’t fully committed to it, but that time will come. My dreams for basketball is to firstly, get a conference, section, and state championship before I graduate. After that, I want to go to college & proceed to get drafted & play in the NBA.

That’s a little bit about me!