Meet high school dunking star Oliviyah Edwards, a top prospect whose fans include Candace Parker

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Meet high school dunking star Oliviyah Edwards, a top prospect whose fans include Candace Parker

To seventh-grade Oliviyah Edwards, it was a dunk. Many categorized it as a rim-graze.

In retrospect, she knows they’re right. That wasn’t a dunk in the first breakout video. But every one since then fits the bill. Candace Parker knows it. Kim Mulkey and Dawn Staley have seen it. And the best NCAA Division I programs in the country want it in their gym.

Edwards, five years removed from a move that can promptly put girls basketball players on the national map, is the No. 2-ranked recruit by ESPN in the 2026 class. While her dunking ability makes headlines and Parker’s Instagram page, her all-around game brings Mulkey, Staley and the nation’s best coaches to recruit.

The 6-foot-3 forward is coveted for her athleticism, strength, defensive versatility and footwork in the paint, plus an expanding shooting range that makes her one of the most versatile in the nation. In a November list of best recruits that included the 2025 class, the five-star prospect nicknamed “Big O” came in at fifth. She’s fielded dozens of offers from Division I programs dating back to middle school.

She trimmed her finalists from 10 down to USC, South Carolina, Tennessee, LSU, Washington and Florida, Edwards exclusively told Yahoo Sports. She is leaning towards one, but wants to take official visits before an announcement closer to November, she said.

“I’m going to keep an open mindset, and then after that, I’m going to make my decision, and that’ll be that,” Edwards told Yahoo Sports.

The Tacoma, Washington, native previously considered Notre Dame, Duke, Florida State and North Carolina. All except Florida and Washington ranked in the final Associated Press Top 25 poll of the 2024-25 season.

When she chooses a school and arrives on campus next summer, “that’s when I’m really gonna blossom and grow into who I’m really supposed to be as an athlete,” she said. “And that’s when you’re really gonna see the monster in me, because I’ll be pushed to that ability.”

Ahead of her senior high school season, she’ll return to Overtime Select this month as captain of , coached by Tennessee’s three-time champion Chamique Holdsclaw. Edwards won Queen of the Court honors in the league’s inaugural season a year ago. The eight-team league provides an opportunity to play with the nation’s best and create connections with future teammates and opponents at the next levels. Autumn Fleary (No. 3 ranked point guard in 2026) and Eve Long (No. 9 recruit, 2027) will also play for Venom, which begins action on Saturday.

Edwards has already bloomed far from her non-basketball roots. As one of the top prospects in the country, she’s more than a girl who dunks. Even though she’d like to do it more.

Edwards viewed herself as a wrestler above all else. And there was plenty of “else.” Rock climbing, football and soccer. Afternoons of neighborhood Nerf tag that bled into the night.

At the start of sixth grade, she began to develop knee pain while doing certain wrestling moves. Her mom, Jordan West, suggested basketball, an activity Edwards played minimally at school recess. They went to a tryout of , the nonprofit AAU program in Tacoma where West’s boyfriend, Zach Carter, coached teams in fourth through eighth grade.

The foray was nearly short-lived. It was so hard to watch Edwards struggling to keep up with a dribbling drill, she said her mother didn’t want to bring her back. She would trip over her own feet up and down the court, West said.

Even though Edwards lacked handles, Carter caught glimpses of potential every time she chased down a lost ball and tried again. The athletic gifts were clear, and the boys marveled at her height. She was the only girl in the program.

“Yeah, watch this,” she recalled telling them at one practice. She lifted upward and grabbed the rim.

“That’s where it all started,” she said. As she developed more bounce, she decided to try it on her outdoor hoop one workout. It went in, and even though it wasn’t regulation, “it was the first time I was like, OK, I can get up there, because it’s still pretty high,” she said.

Oliviyah Edwards goes up for the layup during the State Farm Queen of the Court Takeover on Saturday, August 17, 2024 at OTE Arena in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Adam Hagy/Overtime)

(Adam Hagy/Overtime)

The team of fifth-grade boys played up a grade to sixth with Edwards on the team until March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down. Schools in Washington state closed for 15 months, forcing Edwards to miss in-person life as a seventh-grader.

Carter ran workouts with the couple’s four kids in the interim.

“He had the hurdles,” Edwards said. “We had the ladders out. We were running hills. Literally, like, no excuses, every day, we’re just getting at it. And so that’s really what got me good.”

Edwards said that given the lack of organized basketball and in-person interactions, “no one expected” the talent she brought to the court out of the pandemic’s shutdown. She joined the Northwest Greyhounds of the adidas 3SSB circuit after Carter ran into the coach at the local park one day, West said.

In the span of less than two years, Edwards transitioned from a wrestler lacking ball-handling skills to a recruit dunking on a WNBA icon’s phone.

In the summer before her eighth-grade year, she slammed down the at a local tournament in Centralia, Washington. Parker, whose own dunk at the age of 15 spread widely before the days of social media, posted it to her more than 1 million Instagram followers and reached out directly to the young future star.

“I go out to places where people are like, oh, I’ve seen you on Candace Parker’s page,” said Edwards, who has since met the three-time WNBA champion. “It’s just crazy to me.”

Parker is a semi-regular in the comments section, posting fire emojis and elevating above everyday fans claiming Edwards should sign with their collegiate team.

“I personally see big Tennessee orange in her future,” Parker, a two-time Lady Vols champion, under a post showing Edwards dunking with Mulkey, LSU’s title-winning head coach, in attendance last month.

Last week, Edwards announced , where head coach Kim Caldwell . Edwards visited Rocky Top in January for the Tennessee-LSU showdown and said she “sees a whole bunch of me’s out there” watching Caldwell’s Tennessee offense. Meanwhile, the Tigers program leaned heavily into name, image, likeness support for its players, an aspect Edwards liked.

Edwards already visited USC, which recruit Saniyah Hall in July, and said she liked the teammates with whom she’d play. Edwards played for Naismith National Player of the Year JuJu Watkins this summer in the OT Select Takeover event, an All-Star-type weekend for the company. Watkins tore her ACL in March and will miss most, if not all, of the upcoming NCAA season.

The scheduled preseason trips consist of Florida (Sept. 5), South Carolina (Sept. 19), Washington (Sept. 26) and LSU (Oct. 10). At South Carolina, Staley will “work me hard and bring out that beast I’m talking about,” Edwards said. Both Washington and Florida felt right to Edwards, with the former being close to home, she said.

In May, adidas announced Edwards among its Parker is the company’s president of women’s basketball. The connection isn’t lost on Edwards, who noted that Tennessee is reportedly returning to adidas beginning in 2026.

On the 3SSB adidas circuit, Carter, who took over coaching when Edwards reached 17U, wanted Edwards to develop into “the most versatile player in her class,” West said in an email, after he felt she was being pigeonholed by other coaches into playing traditional center minutes.

Edwards made sure to dunk in her final Greyhounds game this summer, racking up attempts to finally notch one. She intends to slam one in OT Select, where she can work into a flow of dunking more often. They come mostly on fast breaks, typically the case in the women’s game, as she learns how to attack the rim with defenders around her.

The women’s game has long been dinged for its lack of play above the rim, even if it is often a disingenuous argument. As more athletic players develop the skill, that will naturally change. Those who dunk consistently push the game forward, as athletes with rare skillsets are still outsized draws.

“I used to not think about it, but now that the game is evolving, I do think I want to see myself — I do want to dunk more,” Edwards said. “I do. I do think it’ll make women’s basketball watchable too. I think I see people talking about how, like, oh, women don’t do this. This is why we watch men’s and I just feel like, if I can bring more eyes to women’s basketball, I feel like that gives more opportunity to everybody.”

More players than ever before are dunking as college prospects, and once they hit college. The list of women’s players to dunk in an NCAA Division I game has grown quickly since Edwards attended her first basketball tryout. South Carolina 6-3 forward Ashlyn Watkins has three since 2022. Francesca Belibi, a 6-1 forward, came into Stanford known for that skill set.

The last to have done it before the active era was Brittney Griner, a 6-8 Baylor star from 2009-13. Sylvia Fowles (6-6, LSU), Parker (6-4, Tennessee), Sancho Lyttle (6-5, Houston) and Michelle Snow (6-5, Tennessee) all threw one down in college in the 2000s. Georgeann Wells, a 6-foot-6 West Virginia center, was the first to dunk in the 1980s, and North Carolina’s 6-foot forward Charlotte Smith did it in the early 1990s.

In the WNBA’s 29-year history, a total of eight players dunked a combined 38 times — none more than Griner, who crushes the competition with 27. Parker, Lisa Leslie, Fowles and Liz Cambage each have two. The league is on dunk watch for 2025 No. 2 draft pick Dominique Malonga, .

Edwards is among the crop of incoming talents with dunking potential. The WNBA is in the future almost as far as her basketball start is in the past. And while it’s still unclear where she’ll begin her college career next fall, one thing’s for certain: she’ll be there, elevating above the rim, drawing even more eyes to the women’s game.

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