‘Living a dream’: Stanford-bound Whitney High star Harper Peterson reflects on her journey
Harper Peterson remembers her first Stanford experience.
It wasn’t just a game inside Maples Pavilion in Palo Alto that struck the young, wide-eyed basketball enthusiast. It was an experience beyond the taste of the popcorn, the sound of the band and the view of elite-level women’s college athletics.
“I think I was in the fifth grade,” said Peterson, Whitney High School’s senior star guard/forward who is still seeing Stanford Cardinal red for all the right and wonderful reasons. “I was watching that game and thought, ‘Oh, I want to do this. I think I can do this.’ That’s when I fell in love with Stanford.”
By the middle of her Wildcats prep career in the heart of Placer County, the feelings were becoming quite mutual. Stanford coaches expressed interest and then offered a scholarship last fall. But not everyone with post moves, guard skills and upside as broad as her wingspan can get into Stanford. One must be an exceptional student, and that’s just part of the skill set the 6-foot-3 Peterson has.
She is a 4.0 student with her share of advanced-placement courses. Without those grades, she would not be Cardinal material. That can be pretty heavy stuff for a teenager, but Peterson is no ordinary kid. She balances her academic and athletic load while also making time for family, friends and normal teenage living with the focus of someone ready to seize a season and a career full of promise.
“I remember the email I got that said I was accepted to Stanford, and I was so excited,” Peterson said. “There was always that chance I might not get accepted academically because it’s a super tough school to get into. Stanford doesn’t care what kind of athlete you are. You have to have academic excellence to get in. I had that nagging voice of, ‘Don’t know if I’ll get in.’ Then Tara called and said I was accepted, and I was, ‘Oh, my gosh!’”
Tara would be Stanford’s famed coach Tara VanDerveer, who this season became the winningest college basketball coach in history, men or women, with 1,203 victories and counting.
While Peterson keeps tabs on Stanford through social media or games on TV, she has one team in mind these days: Whitney’s maroon and gold-clad Wildcats, ranked fourth by The Sacramento Bee. She is the focal point for every team that takes on Whitney, which heads into next week’s CIF Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs with the aim of repeating as Division II champions.
Peterson can fill up a stat sheet. She averages 14.6 points, 9.0 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 1.9 steals and 1.5 blocked shots. She is fundamentally sound, hustles back on defense and can hit jumpers or post up inside as the finest player in the 19-year history of the school’s girls basketball program.
Peterson is playing with teammates who are also her closest friends. Some of the Wildcats have played basketball since they were in elementary school.
“All the dreams I’ve had as a little kid, I’m living it now,” Peterson said. “My teammates, my friends, my family, coaches and everyone who’s helped me with my growth, I can’t appreciate them enough. I just want to soak it in.”
Whitney coach Sydney Gatson said Peterson is one of a kind.
“She’s a once-in-a-generation player,” Gatson said. “She combines that selflessness, humbleness, her size and skill set, and she wants to elevate everyone. I haven’t coached anyone like her.”
Gatson said that Peterson’s impact goes beyond the varsity gyms in Rocklin. The boys and girls at Spring View and Granite Oaks middle schools know of her.
“She’s inserted herself as a community leader,” the coach said. “When COVID hit (in 2020), we didn’t do girls basketball camps, so she asked to be part of the boys camps, and that’s when the fan club started for her. Her and some teammates developed relationships with our feeder players. Little kids fall over themselves when Harper walks into the gym. She’s brought that love of the game for all these upcoming players. There’s no filling her shoes.”
Loved soccer before hoops
Before there was any semblance of stardom, Peterson had to figure out her growing body, her long limbs and coordination. Early on, she took to soccer, racing down field with long strides while also breaking down the opponents like a chess player.
“Soccer was my main sport and basketball was something I did for fun,” Peterson said. “Basketball was not a sport I wanted to do in the future. I was uncoordinated. But I had learned some basketball IQ from soccer. I’d see the passing lanes, share the ball. It wasn’t until around eighth grade that I started to take basketball seriously.”
That was the COVID year of 2020. Peterson and her father, Chance Peterson, spent hours outside of their home shooting baskets. Chance was a player in his day, the winter of 1983, when he played at Saddleback High in Orange County and the state statistical leaderboard would include Sacramento’s Kevin Johnson and Highlands’ Sean Chambers.
“With COVID, all I could do was basketball,” Peterson said. “My dad, being a player and a coach, a big mentor, would help me. I’d be outside for six or seven hours for months and he’d rebound for me. That’s when I improved the most. I wasn’t on the couch.”
Also supportive and along for the ride on this hoops journey: Peterson’s mother, Michele.
“I was probably the ‘mean mom,’” Michele Peterson said. “We didn’t let Harper play or travel out of the local area until eighth grade. Reno was the big trip once a year. There isn’t any reason to take 9-year-olds to Buffalo, New York, when they can’t dribble or make a free throw.”
Before long, the Petersons had a national schedule, the norm for the elite players, not that it’s all fun and games. AAU ball can be as intense as it can be interesting. A crowning moment for the Peterson family was when Harper was selected to the Jason Kidd Select Team, one of the top AAU programs in the country endorsed by one of California’s all-time great players.
From soccer fields to basketball courts, inside and out, from the accelerated growth as a player and person entering high school, the Harper Peterson story is just getting started. She wants to study communications and psychology at Stanford and also coach someday, to mentor the next wave of girls who want to show that they have game.
‘Living a dream’
Peterson’s main theme is effort. She said players can control that part of their game. To that end, she studies old game film and new clips, anything to learn something, and to appreciate how far she has come.
“I saw some games from my freshman year and I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh! I can’t believe I’m being recruited,’” Peterson said. “What did they see in a tall and skinny kid like me? One tap, one bump, and I’d fall down. But I got better. Now, I watch film and I see that I can handle the ball, shoot and play inside and outside and guard small players to the biggest. I’ve come a long way.”
Peterson will lose herself in music, preferably old R&B, to distance herself from basketball, sometimes before competition. In gymnasiums near and far, she is a focal point. You can’t miss her, the length, the skills, the long, braided hair, the game-face look and, later, the smile of someone having the time of her life.
Peterson handles the heckling of opposing fans, elbows to the lower back from league rivals and expectations, taking it all in stride.
“I am proud of myself,” Peterson said. “There have been some hard times, dealing with things, growing, getting better, and life happens. I’m not going to make every shot, but I’ll always work on my game. I can say I’m living a dream, but there’s still so much more that I can work on. It humbles me.”