There are a number of reasons for Stanford fans to be excited about the verbal commitment of Atlanta The Lovett School’s Jenna Brown to join the 2018 recruiting class. The five-star point guard played on the U17 team last summer, is fully recovered from a knee injury and is a dynamic playmaker.

And when a head coach who has known Brown since she was in sixth grade is almost at a loss for words to describe Brown’s character and ability, that’s a pretty good sign, too.

“There are a lot of words swirling through my head,” Liz Kennedy said. “She’s just … impressive. On and off the court she has got it together. She knows what she wants, she knows where she’s going, and she’s a kid who is willing to work her butt off to get it. There aren’t that many kids out there who have that kind of talent and capability and also have the work ethic to go get it. Off the court she’s very mature, driven and committed to what she’s doing. She’s just an impressive kid.”

Kennedy coached Jenna’s older sister, Taylor, for two years before she went to Princeton. Taylor graduated from the Ivy League university this year. So, it’s not a surprise that Jenna focused on prestigious academic universities with her own recruitment. She committed to Notre Dame in January, but recently came to what she described as a very tough decision to re-open her recruitment on July 17.

A few days later she announced her decision to attend Stanford. Even though it has been close to a year since she was on The Farm for an unofficial visit, Brown said she built a good relationship with the Stanford coaches, who recruited her hard before she committed to Notre Dame.

"Visiting the campus I got a feeling there … that I really didn’t get anywhere else,” she said. “I felt like I would fit in well. The coaches were the type of people I want to surround myself with and the girls were great. They definitely are people I could see becoming my friends.”

And she already has one close friend on the team. Brown met current Cardinal freshman and fellow Georgian Maya Dodson when they played together on the U17 team last summer.

“The U17 was a great experience,” Brown said. “It was extremely humbling to be able to represent our country. I had never been overseas like that before. It was a very competitive environment. Also it was great because I got to meet people like Maya.”

Brown said Dodson wasn’t a bug in her ear about Stanford and she let Brown come to her own decision. Brown did find it reassuring that Dodson is “really enjoying herself” at Stanford.

Brown suffered an ACL injury before her junior year that forced her forced her to become a courtside spectator for 11 months. She only returned in July to competitive basketball.

“There was a lot of frustration initially,” she said. “It was a helpless feeling.”

Kennedy counseled her star that she needed to focus on the positive moments during her physical rehabilitation. Use the time off the court to re-charge and avoid the burnout she sometimes sees in top recruits before they go to college.

“Be ready when you come back,” Kennedy told Brown. “Not to say that tearing your ACL is an opportunity, but if you look at it that way you can re-energize yourself. To me she is stronger than she ever was before.”

A dependable leader on the court, the point guard tried to learn how to influence the game from the bench and how best to avoid future injuries.

“I learned a lot sitting back and taking a different approach to how I view basketball,” Brown said. “You slow the game down a bit when you’re not in the game. I learned about the right play to call in certain situations and I definitely learned more about my body. I’m more conscious of how things work and what I need to do to take care of myself.”

Brown will take an official visit to Stanford in October, when she will meet the other two Stanford commits in the class, twins Lexie and Lacie Hull, for the first time. Then, faster than it seems possible, she’ll step onto campus as a freshman at Stanford.

Kennedy sees it as a perfect fit for the school, head coach Tara VanDerveer and player.

“Jenna is the type of kid, to me, where her personality fits Stanford,” Kennedy said. “You go to Stanford because you’re a driven person. Whether you’re a student-athlete or a student, those are the type of people who go to Stanford -- the ones who want to make a difference and she is that kind of kid. She is not just going there to play basketball.”