ATLANTA- Former Great Falls High basketball player Jaden Stanley announced last Saturday that he has committed to play basketball at NCAA Division I Morehead State in Kentucky. The 6-foot-4 forward spent this past season at Columbia State Community College in Tennessee.
“I went up to do a workout for (Morehead State), and they really liked me and they offered me a scholarship for next season, so I decided to take it,” Stanley said.
Stanley is Chippewa-Cree and grew up on the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation. He played his freshman and sophomore seasons at Great Falls High, before deciding to move to Atlanta to live with his father and gain more exposure in basketball.
“I saw a tremendous jump. Not just in my game but in my confidence. I was playing with guys that were ranked, guys that had offers from all over the nation,” Stanley said. “I was competing with them on the same level, if not higher, and that definitely did something to my confidence in a good way.”
The Morehead State commitment is Stanley’s second in NCAA Division I. He had previously committed to play at Air Force out of high school, but withdrew from the academy after dealing with incidents of racism.
“Every kid dreams of being a DI athlete. It’s always in the back of their head,” Stanley said. “I always had the dream and the thought of being a DI athlete, but it never really hit me that I could actually achieve my dream until my senior year, end of my junior year.”
