KIDS to WATCH : JENNY GADD

Basketball Yorba Linda Age 13

A versatile athlete, Jenny Gadd enjoys soccer, tennis and competitive swimming.

But the sport preferred by Gadd, an eighth-grader at Yorba Linda Middle School, and the one at which she excels is basketball.

“I like basketball because I like to run and there’s a lot of action,” Gadd said. “It’s my favorite sport.”

Even if she weren’t so talented, she would still attract a lot of attention. Gadd is a 6-foot-1 center for Trauma, a National Junior Basketball League team in Yorba Linda.

She started playing basketball in a city league five years ago in Visalia. Her family moved to Bishop and then last June to Yorba Linda, where Gadd has continued to pursue basketball.

“She plays soccer every year, but her first love is basketball,” said Kay Gadd, Jenny’s mother. “We kind of thought she might do well (in basketball) because of her height. Roughly by the time she was in the seventh grade she was this tall already . . . We’ve put up a lot of basketball hoops wherever we’ve lived.”

The practice and instruction from her father, Mike, have paid off. Though Trauma doesn’t keep track, Coach Derrell Brown said Gadd gets most of the team’s rebounds. She also averages 12 points.

“She’s a very good shooter. She’s very quick and very athletic,” Brown said. “She’s going to be a superstar.”

If that comes true, Gadd would like it to be while she’s wearing the green and gold of the Brea-Olinda Lady Cats, perennially one of the top girls’ basketball programs in the Southern Section.

That’s one equation Gadd, whose favorite school subject is algebra, is hoping to work out.

“I’m supposed to go to Troy, but I’m going to try to get into Brea-Olinda,” Gadd said.

Said Kay Gadd: “We’ll have to wait and see about that.”