ILYANNA BOCANEGRA '23 Recruiting Profile

Winning the district championship in the 8th grade, helping our school win and receive a banner was at the time the highlight of my basketball career. It turns out that getting to high school, and having some of the same teammates and being on the starting five on the freshman team has made me realize that all the hard work is paying off. My goal is to go out there, grow as a basketball player, getting stronger and better and become an even better teammate and team player.

My focus in high school is to grow as a student, as I have made it into a magnet program for engineering. While a freshman most of my classes are Pre-AP so my classmates are all upper class-men. This has given me the opportunity to grow and mature and learn how to work along side older classmates. I think this is a great step in preparing me for life as a college student, where I will be surrounded by classmates of all ages and backgrounds. 

My career goals include getting into a great college, with an amazing engineering program, where I can pursue my goals of becoming a mechanical engineer, graduate and apply to work at NASA. My dream occupation has me developing and building the robots that we send on space missions. While pursuing my academic goals I hope to be able to continue to play the sport I love and have been playing since I was six years old. It started out as me just trying another sport, as I was already playing soccer, but I ended up falling in love with the game and competitive nature of the sport. I have since played not only for my 5th grade team, middle school and now high school, but have also joined a traveling competitive team. Playing for both the school and a club team has allowed me to learn and grow under different coaching methods and training. I know the joys of winning championships and tournaments, but also have experienced the disappointment of losing. I have used these losses to evaluate my game, and discover what I did wrong or can do better and how I can improve as a player and teammate.

What makes me different from most players I know is that while I do enjoying scoring, I understand basketball is a team sport and therefore also get satisfaction out of an assist, or rebounding, or stopping a play and giving my team a chance to score or get the ball back. My excitement comes from my team as a whole coming together and dominating on the court. Having already worked with multiple coaches, I know how to follow directions and learn and grow under any coaching method. I am also a multi-sport athlete, as I run track and field, and am planning on trying volleyball in my sophomore year. This makes me committed not only to being the best athlete and teammate I can be, but also being the best student as I am aware of how my grades can affect my ability to play in any sport.