according to the NCAA-managed National Letter of Intent program<\/a>.<\/p>\n“I’m super excited for it,” Carson said. “Going down there a couple weekends ago, It feels like a new home”<\/p>\n
Pepperdine is a private Christian college located close to the western edge of Los Angeles proper. Founded in 1937, admission is selective and its athletics teams are considered competitive.<\/p>\n
“It’s right on the beach, right on Malibu. The area is great. The energy is great, not too big, not too small,” Carson said. “I really connected with the coaches. I think they wanted me for more than basketball, they wanted me as a person.”<\/p>\n
Carson said she intends to work toward a career in law, a choice inspired by Juneau District Attorney Angie Kemp, who coached Carson in basketball when she was younger, and who Carson interned for when she was older.<\/p>\n
“I’m aiming for law school,” Carson said. “Getting to see her working the courtroom, I wanted to do that.”<\/p>\n
Carson, who grew up in Juneau, moved to Washington state with a relative for her sophomore and junior high school years in order to play basketball on a traveling club team. She returned to Juneau her senior year to help lead the team to a solid season, scoring more than 400 points this season, according to coach Steve Potter.<\/p>\n
“Another good thing about being back is my dad is at the end of the bench every game,” Carson said. “It’s a good feeling for your last year of high school basketball.”<\/p>\n
Carson said she’s not going to take it easy, even after accepting Pepperdine’s offer.<\/p>\n
“We have a goal of winning regions. We have regions coming up, states coming up,” Carson said. “We’re going to leave our mark, tell everyone in the state that Juneau’s a competitor.”<\/p>\n
No one is an island, Carson acknowledged, thanking those who had supported her ambition and her drive throughout the years.<\/p>\n
“I just wanted to say, ‘Thank you’ to everyone in the community. They know I’ve wanted to play basketball my whole life,” Carson said. “I couldn’t do it without a team.”<\/p>\n
• Contact reporter Michael S. Lockett at 757.621.1197 or mlockett@juneauempire.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She’s been offered a full ride to the prestigious private school. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":59056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[240,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-59055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-sports","tag-high-school-sports","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59055"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=59055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}