She’s a 6-4 9th-grader who’s ‘automatic’ from 3. Ella Peper breaks down her Kentucky offer.

For the first half of her seventh-grade season, Ella Peper — legitimately — shot 100% from 3-point range.

Kristen Campopiano, the assistant athletic director and head coach for the varsity girls basketball team at Dexter Southfield in Massachusetts called upon Peper, one of the fastest risers in the high school class of 2028, to serve as the team’s shooting specialist.

“Her first year she played for me as a seventh grader, she didn’t play a ton,” Campopiano said. “… She would come in and I want to say she was 100% from the 3-point line for the first half of the season. And she was just automatic, but that is really all she did. And then the team made a big deal of it, she was like, ‘No! I can’t shoot, now I can’t shoot.’ I’m like, ‘Stop it. That’s why you’re going in.’ This really isn’t normal to be perfect from the 3-point line for half the season.”

Now “6-4 with shoes on,” Peper told the Herald-Leader there are several aspects of the shooting guard’s game that aren’t necessarily normal for her size or age. Which is why more than 15 Division I programs — including Kentucky, Florida State, Louisville, Alabama and Purdue — have already offered the 14-year-old.

She’s garnered attention as a talented prospect with good size, a high ceiling and an obvious love for the sport.

“For someone that tall, the way she moves is unbelievable,” Campopiano said. “She’s so smooth, she’s so fluid. She’s quick, she’s very athletic. To see someone at that size be able to move like a guard is kind of unheard of, especially that young … as you see kids grow, they kind of go through an awkward phase when they’re growing. They kind of lose their balance and all that stuff, and throughout the whole thing of her growing, she’s been so athletic and coordinated, and smooth for her size. And I think that that’s what they see.”

LOCKED IN

Since she was young, Peper said, she was always bigger than most players her age.

The daughter of former University of Vermont and overseas pro player Craig Peper, she’d practice with him in their driveway as a little kid. Her father, who also typically played with a height advantage at 6-foot-8, made sure the first priority was her shooting form.

“Some kids, when they’re younger, they just chuck it up and they ruin their form right away,” Ella Peper said. “They ruin all their chances. So my dad didn’t want that to happen to me, so we had a rule for two years. He was like, ‘OK, I’ll rebound for you, but if you’re 3 feet out, I’m not rebounding for you. You can go get it yourself.’ So I’d stand in the paint for like an hour and just do form shots. I’ve had the same form ever since I was little. I’ve been developing it. It just all started from reps when I was younger. It started for me not starting way out, I always started in. And then (now) before getting games I do form shots, too.”

Naturally, opponents came to know Peper as a shooter. Her solution? Continue to expand her versatility — and, in turn, force others to expand their scouting reports.

“I’m not a person to do just one thing,” Peper said. “I can block, I can shoot, I can score, I can play defense, all that. So I feel like it’s getting harder to scout me, because it’s not like, ‘OK, she can only shoot, she can also drive now.’ Just the unknowingness of what I can do next. So I think it’s also just my size. I got really lucky with my physique and stuff, but I feel like, overall, in general, it’s hard to scout, because I can do more than one thing.”

The product of a Boston Celtics-loving family, Peper’s passion for basketball has always been there.

“I’m in the gym all the time,” Peper said. “It’s not really a sport to me, it’s kind of like my life. Because if I go a day or two without touching a basketball, I want to touch a basketball and shoot so bad. I’m working at a summer camp and I’m just fake dribbling a basketball, or finding every opportunity I can to dribble a ball. I love it, and I never get sick of it. And I feel like, if you don’t love it, you’re gonna get burnt out, so you gotta love it.”

Last season with Dexter Southfield, Peper received All-New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) honors after averaging 12.3 points, 7.2 rebounds and 2.3 blocks during the team’s 22-6 season. It was her first true taste of starting for the touted program, which produced the 2023-24 Massachusetts Gatorade Player of the Year in incoming Providence College freshman Orlagh Gormley.

“She definitely is a three-level scorer,” Campopiano said of Peper. “And one of the big things that she saw after her seventh-grade year was, ‘If I’m not open on the 3-point line,’ she had trouble creating her own shots. So she worked really hard on doing that. Her stepback, her driving to the basket, all that stuff improved greatly.”

Now officially a high schooler, Peper views ninth grade as an opportunity to continue to find areas to grow and shine. Instead of nerves, Peper is prepared to lean into the fun that comes with having a better sense of what’s needed.

“I’m actually really excited,” Peper said. “I’m so glad I had the first two years just to warm up to it and see how it is. I’m really glad I had the first two years, but I feel like this year is gonna be good. I started last year, so I feel like it’s kind of going to be the same. I’ve been where I’m going to be next year.”

ENTER THE WILDCATS

With several Division I offers in her bag, Peper first noticed Kentucky women’s basketball head coach Kenny Brooks and his staff at one of her games during the NEPSAC Tournament.

They had come out to watch Tabor Academy (Massachusetts) standout Kaelyn Carroll, the No. 29 overall prospect in the class of 2025 and a friend of Peper’s through playing in AAU with the Bay State Jaguars. The duo are often compared to one another due to their size — Carroll is 6-foot-2 — along with strong guard skills and similarities in appearance and mannerisms.

“We’re just saying we are (related) now,” Peper said. “Just as a joke, because so many people ask us. But it’s funny because we play the same, we talk the same, walk the same, same number, same team, same jersey, all of it. People mistake us a lot.”

Peper said she was proud of her performance in the game while Kentucky was in attendance, and, at the end of June, she received a phone call from assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Radvile Autukaite.

“She was so good,” Peper said. “It was one of my favorite calls. I love them so much. We talked about how much I love basketball, the basic stuff, and how they came to the NEPSAC Tournament. And then she was like, ‘OK, Kenny wants to talk to you.’”

Peper noted that, when an assistant coach tells her they’re passing the phone to the head coach, that often means there’s a real chance they’re going to offer her a scholarship. Though “you never know,” she said she had a pretty good feeling.

“I was so happy,” Peper said. “Because I was like, ‘There’s no way Kentucky is offering me right now. Like, come on. Kentucky?’ So they offered me. And Coach Kenny, he was great. We just talked about great stuff, it was a nice conversation. And then I talked to Coach Rad again, and then we just ended the call. But I think, in the end, it was just a great call. We talked about them, we talked about me. It was one of the better calls that I’ve had.”

Peper said they also discussed Carroll and “how they relate us to each other” on the court.

Kentucky, just like the other programs vying for Peper’s attention, is recruiting her as a wing and a shooting guard.

“Usually, people my height, you just stick in the paint,” Peper said. “But a few of my teammates, a lot of my coaches, the people that really know what they’re talking about, the college coaches, even say they’re like, ‘Yeah, don’t let anybody tell you you’re not a wing, you’re not a shooting guard. You’re a guard.’”

Of course, her height and length don’t hurt. Especially on defense.

“She is just so long,” Campopiano said. “She gets blocks and tips and deflections all the time. And it’s funny, my assistant coach calls this the Ella Peper effect, when somebody drives to the basket and she comes over in help (defense), and they immediately stop and kick it out. They don’t even try and go up. And he sits there laughs and he goes, ‘It’s the Ella Peper effect!’ They see her coming and they don’t want to get blocked, so they just kind of take it and kick it out.”

Peper’s Kentucky offer was just the latest reminder that her hard work is paying off. Though there are still several years before she has to come to a decision about her college career, she’s enjoying the journey of becoming the player she’s always known she could be.

“I always had belief in myself,” Peper said. “That was also my dream as a little girl, to play in college and be a big-time player. I always knew in my heart that I could play in college, if I worked at it … Getting better in every area. You can’t really work on just one thing because it’s not going to get you anywhere. So just doing a little bit of everything, even if I’m not going to do in the game, just practicing it and then it’ll pay off sometime. So just, just working on everything. And I’ve got time, too, so I can just try things out.”

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