STILL WORTH WATCHING : Five Years Later, These Athletes Are Fulfilling Their Early Promise : Jennie Gadd

Jennie Gadd wanted to go to Brea Olinda to play basketball, and said so in the “Kids to Watch” story. At the time, she was 13, a 6-foot-1 eighth-grader from Yorba Linda.

She didn’t go. “The principal at Troy [Jerry Atkin] saw the story and said, ‘No way,’ he wouldn’t sign a transfer for any reason,” Gadd recalled.

Gadd grew to be 6-4, dutifully attended Troy, and played for an average team while basketball factory Brea Olinda won three state titles.

Regrets? Occasionally.

“At Troy, there were times I regretted it, but I wouldn’t trade my times at Troy for anything,” she said. “We did something special at Troy. We turned the program around. People started going to our games, people started caring, and every win for us was like a championship.”

There were those, too. Gadd helped Troy to three Freeway League titles. Before her senior season, she committed to Mississippi, which is now ranked 20th in the nation.

“At Troy, I never thought of myself as someone you would compare to [Brea’s] Nicole Erickson,” Gadd said, “but last year, she was a freshman [at Purdue] and didn’t play a lot. And now we’re both in top-25 programs. It is kind of unbelievable.”

Having Erickson’s dad on the Troy staff Gadd’s senior season helped, too.

“[Keith Erickson] helped a lot with recruiting because of what he went through with Nicole,” Gadd said. “I was scared to come to Mississippi, and Nicole was going through some of that in Indiana. We talked about what that was like.”

The “Kids to Watch” story, said Mike Gadd, was important to his daughter’s development.

“I think it made her feel special,” he said. “Any time you’re 6 feet tall in seventh grade, you’re a little awkward. It showed her she could use the skills and gifts she had been given in ways that she hadn’t thought of before.”

Some health-related problems have prevented Gadd from making much of an impact this season. She has played in half the Rebels’ games, averaging six minutes, 2.3 points and 2.0 rebounds.

“The coaches here say that I haven’t developed fully and can be one of the better players in our conference,” said Gadd, four inches taller than any Rebel starter.