Cameron Brink’s Volleyball Career – Now a Projected #2 WNBA Draft Pick, How Did Stanford Alumni Make the Jump to Basketball?

Headed toward the 2024 WNBA draft, Cameron Brink is set to make it to the women’s big league. The 6-foot-4 senior forward dished out an amazing performance in the 2023-24 season. She averaged 17.4 points, 11.9 rebounds, and 2.8 assists per game. Moreover, she won several accolades including the 2024 Lisa Leslie Award, the 2024 Naismith Defensive Player of the Year, AP All-American First-Team, the 2024 WBCA Coaches’ All-American, the 2024 Pac-12 Player and Defensive Player of the Year, All Pac-12 Team, Pac-12 All-Defensive Team. Now that she is stepping into another and one of the biggest chapters of her basketball career, it’s time we explore how she ended up here.

From having her interests set in a field very different from basketball, or sports in general. This is Cameron Brink’s emergence to becoming Pac-12 Player of the Year and as a remarkable Cardinal at Stanford.

Cameron Brink’s volleyball stint

Cameron hasn’t always been inclined towards basketball. As a kid, she was drawn towards arts, and then her interests inclined towards volleyball, especially after she watched the 2012 Summer Olympics. But this was not her first encounter with the sport. Her mother Michelle did play volleyball for a year at Virginia Tech, alongside her then teammate, Sonya Adams (Stephen Curry’s mother).

As a Southridge High School sophomore, Cameron Brink led her high school volleyball team, the Southridge Skyhawks to their second consecutive state title in 2017. Brink’s 2nd astonishing state championship win was later praised by her godbrother, Stephen Curry in his Instagram post where he wrote, “Major congrats to the young phenom @cameron_brink finishing the job last night winning the 1st Oregon State Volleyball title in school history. So proud of ya!”

After winning the state championship, Brink received a scholarship offer from Nebraska to play as their middle blocker. At that time, Cam was at a place where she could play two sports. However, her interests were still tilted towards arts than athletics.

For most of the kids out there, basketball is more than a sport. It is their passion, their medium of expressing themselves as distinguished individuals, and a recognizing factor of their personalities. However, this was not the case with Cam, as the apple dropped too far from the tree in this case.

“Cameron didn’t want to play basketball because she knew we played basketball. When you tell your own kid something, they typically are going to go the opposite way,” said Michelle. But Cam’s godmother was not giving up on bringing her inner athlete out. As a result, she kept pushing and nudging every time she was around Cameron asking, “So, you still want to be an artist? You don’t want to play any sports? Why Cameron? Why don’t you just try?”

She spent 3 years in Amsterdam as her parents had to move there to work for Nike in the European market. After 3 years, the Brink family returned and stayed at the Curry family residence in Charlotte. The timing was somewhat galactic as her return coincided with Dell Curry’s summer basketball camp. Cameron was still not giving in to the thought of playing.

However, after a few negotiations, push finally came to shove and Cameron finally did it. As it was not her decision totally, Cam attended the camp halfway. At first, she was miserable as one can imagine, but day by day, she began to understand the moves and got better at the game. Eventually, her confidence too started to grow. She then joined a team after returning to the Netherlands. There, she found the rules to be a bit different with a realization that she was better than the other kids. It was then she had a newfound feeling of belonging to the sport.

After flying back to the States, Cam joined a strong club, got good coaching, and started turning into an aspiring basketball athlete. Given her 6-foot-plus height and her competitive nature, she garnered these two things as her greatest strengths that led her to Stanford.

Cameron at Stanford

A 13-year-old Cameron attended a basketball camp at Stanford. There, her talent spoke loudly. Amazed by her style of play and her tall and thin body frame, Stanford’s associate head coach Amy Tucker offered Cameron a two-year scholarship at Stanford. Cameron hasn’t looked back since then.

“She’s a real special talent, and she’s only going to get better. She’ll be an All-American. I don’t think there’s any doubt she’ll be an Olympian. She’s already a national champion. There’s nothing that can stop Cam,” said Stanford’s recently retired head coach Tara VanDerveer.

Now, with her college basketball career coming to an end, the light is shining even brighter to lighten her path forward in the WNBA.