OREM — When Michelle Harrison was about 8 or 9 years old, her older sister, Kara, took her downstairs to show her something she hoped would inspire her.
"I remember that so well," said Michelle with a slight giggle. "It was about 10 o'clock at night, and she showed me where she kept her college letters."
Kara Harrison opened a binder containing about seven letters from colleges attempting to recruit her to play basketball. The older Harrison told Michelle that if she worked hard, she too, could get letters from colleges asking her to play basketball in exchange for an education.
"I thought it was the coolest thing ever," Michelle Harrison said. "I thought, 'It's going to be so hard, but I wanted to work hard so I could get letters like hers . . . Now me and Kara laugh so hard about it."
The sisters find humor in that night because the youngest Harrison child has already accumulated 900 letters just as her junior basketball season begins. The efforts to recruit Harrison, who was named the Deseret Morning News 3A MVP last season as a sophomore, have stunned even those who knew she had talent at a young age.
"Right away," said her mother, Judy Harrison, when asked when she knew Harrison was an above average talent in hoops. "From the time she was very little, she was very athletic. . . . She grew up under the bleachers at the games of her brother and sister."
She was first recruited at age 5 by the father of a playmate, who thought Michelle would be better off playing with boys. Her mother firmly believes playing with boys until she was in junior high on super-league teams affected her development positively.
It may also account for why she is such a phenomenal rebounder and shot blocker. Michelle Harrison averaged double digit points, rebounds and assists last season.
Though still young, her list of accomplishments is long. She was an Adidas All-American last summer, and this fall was named a Street and Smith All-American. She got her first college letter from Stanford in her freshman year after attending a Nike Tournament with her high school team.
"It was so cool," she said. "I was just shocked to get it and to get one from such a good school."
The letters trickled in her freshman season, and then she began to get more and more after her summer league team traveled throughout the West.
"Some were from colleges I'd never heard of, and some were from the top programs in the country," she said. But after the Adidas camp this summer, the floodgates opened, and colleges have been bombarding her with letters and e-mail ever since.
NCAA forbids college coaches from speaking directly with Michelle Harrison in her junior season. They can talk with her coaches, and if she goes to their campuses, they can talk to her. They are also allowed to correspond by e-mail.
"I think the Adidas camp was absolutely a big part of the increase in letters," she said. "I knew I was very lucky to go, and I was really, really excited and grateful. I just tried to do the little things, and show the coaches I'll do whatever work I need to to win."
She and her mother have narrowed her list of potential suitors to 30, but she said the top five or six fluctuate.
"What keeps me interested is if they're interested in me," she said. "Like one school sent me a letter congratulating me on making Street and Smith All-American team, and another one asked how I liked my new school . . . People that are more than just coaches, but I feel like I know them, and they are my friends."
The honor student has already had three colleges come to her high school practices to watch her work out. She said she tries to ignore that they're in the bleachers because she doesn't want to get nervous.
"I can wave at them," she said. "I can call them, too, but that's nerve-wracking because what would I say?"
She is coming to grips with the fact that she's a little out of the ordinary when it comes to recruits, and most of the time it feels pretty good.
"Sometimes I'm just in awe," she said, again with a little laugh. "When I sit down and look at my letters, I just think, 'Holy smokes!' It's times like that when you feel really grateful because not everyone has this opportunity."
E-mail: adonaldson@desnews.com