Ayla McDowell

Ayla McDowell is so focused on being great that she keeps a list of goals she hopes to accomplish in her basketball career. The list is an old crumpled up paper at this point, but with every success she achieves, she still opens it up and marks something off the list. “Having a list of goals for me is very important because I like achieving them,” McDowell told the Houston Chronicle. “I love going back and highlighting them and then in the future, when I get older, looking back at all the goals that I accomplished. I just know it's going to make me really happy.” Through her junior year of high school, she's checked a lot of boxes. As a junior she was a third-team All-American who averaged 19.6 points and 9.2 rebounds as her team went 30-3 and reached the 6A regional semifinals. “Ayla’s a special kid and everyone who meets her will know that she just has a presence about herself that's fun to be around,” Cypress Springs coach Taneisha Rogers said. “She wakes me up at five o'clock in the morning, ‘Coach can I get in the gym.’ She's just a gym rat. A lot of people don't know that about her. She's the first person in the gym, three times a week, all year long, and she's also the last one to leave.”