USC’s JuJu Watkins has become a ‘beacon of light’ for young fans

LOS ANGELES — For nearly two hours, 10-year-old Izzy Lao stands in anticipation, patient beyond her years. Her tiny arm wriggles through the metal guardrail set up outside the Galen Center, holding out a foam finger in the shape of a three symbol. Her eyes fixate on the glass doors on the south side of the arena.

She waits for one woman to emerge, the bun-sporting 18-year-old rapidly changing life in Los Angeles.

It is senior day at USC, and the postgame celebration runs long this Saturday afternoon, after a loss to Utah at a noon tip-off. Eventually, a security guard emerges — players will be a while, he announces. And much of the crowd outside the arena slowly dissipates, shrinking in number. No autograph from JuJu Watkins today.

Izzy stays. How long is she willing to wait?

“Until they come out,” she grins.

She and mother Marielle are from the San Fernando Valley, where they first heard about Watkins, back in her high school days hooping for Sierra Canyon High. The Laos are part of an ever-expanding legion, local parents and daughters curious enough to see Watkins for themselves and becoming hooked, snapping up the No. 12 jersey of this young woman from Watts who has treated a basketball court as equal parts battleground and avant-garde canvas.

And Watkins feels it, always taking time for the L.A. girls who stick their hands out for high-fives before games and autographs after. Because she was them, not long ago.

“However I’m feeling,” Watkins said, “I make sure I do something extra for somebody who’s probably coming to see us for the first time.”

When she finally exits the Galen Center doors this late February, her footsteps are slower than usual, weighed by the emotions and fatigue of a loss. But she still stops to sign every card. She takes a photo with a baby, like a presidential candidate. She accepts a gift of custom-made socks with a genuine smile.

And she signs Izzy’s foam finger, reaching across the guardrail.

“I’m gonna keep it forever,” Izzy says with a smile, twirling against the metal, just an L.A. girl with a dream.

‘A huge responsibility’

Hours before Izzy gets her signature in late February, Crystalle Edwards’ 9-year-old daughter Brooklyn waits by the tunnel in the lower basin at Galen, ready for Watkins and USC to run out pregame against Utah.

Basketball is her dream, Brooklyn says. But before this USC season, she’d never as much touched a basketball. Then she became a regular at Galen, wearing the Watkins shirt, her dad Phil Blackmon longtime friends with Watkins’ father Robert.

“I thought, maybe I should do this to be just like her,” Brooklyn says.

A minute later, the swell begins, and Brooklyn’s interest in any conversation about JuJu Watkins collapses under the excitement of seeing JuJu Watkins. Screams from her generation ring out as players begin taking the floor, and Brooklyn rushes over to the rails along the tunnel, stretching her nine-year-old arms as far as they can possibly reach in search of a high-five.

There is a unique quality to watching Watkins work, the kind that inspires this rush from the mini-hers that come in droves. She can make basketball look incredibly simple in honed fluidity of movements, a euro-step here and a two-dribble pull-up there. She can also make it look incredibly hard, smacking the hardwood in all-out squabbles for loose balls.

The season-long stats contain incredible pluses (26.9 points a game) and definite negatives (40.6% from the field, 4.2 turnovers a game). Forget the stats. She’s inspired greatness in her locker room, head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said, just with the confidence she’s carried. Her fans see it.

And so Watkins stops for every fan that comes her way, every Brooklyn she meets, because this is both a duty and a privilege.

“I think she’s quite aware that she never, ever wants a young lady to leave thinking, ‘Well, that’s really JuJu? Is that who she is?’ And then act out in some way that’s not appropriate,” USC program legend Cheryl Miller said in a February conversation with the Southern California News Group. “And that’s a huge responsibility on someone so young. But I think JuJu understands that.”

Rising above it

As a sixth-grader fairly new to basketball and playing on her middle-school team in San Bernardino, Anastisia Villarreal was struggling to figure out the type of player she was. So mother Francesca started looking for inspiration. She learned about JuJu Watkins in February, showing Anastisia one of USC’s games, and her daughter’s face lit up. I gotta see her.

Anastisia had found who she wanted to be.

“She didn’t give up,” Anastisia said when asked what was inspiring to her about watching Watkins. “If she missed the shot, she would go to get her own rebound.”

There are 30-plus games in the past, Gottlieb said a week ago, that show Watkins is the now for women’s basketball. She is also the future. Her star is primed and ready to rise as USC looks to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament past Saturday’s Sweet 16 opponent Baylor, only set to earn more national exposure once the Trojans play on the Big Ten Network next season. But her hyper-local influence on the youth of her hometown is special in its own right. Edwards – and Brooklyn – are L.A. natives, just up the street from Galen, a few minutes from Watkins’ roots in Watts.

“Having her come from that area, and what it’s known for, she’s that beacon of light to show kids – even though this is your environment, you can rise above that,” Edwards said of Watkins.

JuJu Watkins exits Galen after USC’s win over Kansas with hundreds waiting for her. A real-life rock star. pic.twitter.com/pQWCIYWYUv

— Luca Evans (@bylucaevans) March 26, 2024

An hour after USC’s win over Kansas in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Monday night – their last game at Galen, no matter how the season plays out from here – Watkins emerged through the south glass doors one final time, still running off dwindling adrenaline. Fans at the guardrail were packed nearly to the overflow, and they screamed as their rock star emerged, jostling like the front row of a concert. Pens awaited, with whiteboards and USC caps and T-shirts; Watkins raised an arm to the sky in encouragement and got to signing.

Many of them there were young Black girls from Los Angeles, inspired to play just as Brooklyn and Anastisia had been. Watkins smiled softly when asked about it after practice Wednesday.

“I think it’s a concept that I’m still, not really able to grasp,” Watkins said. “Just, thinking about the type of impact that I have here, just being able to stay home and inspire others from my community as well.”

She does grasp it, though, beyond her years.

“It’s really why I came here, honestly,” she said.