Olivia Miles and Hannah Hidalgo: Pick Your Poison
Hannah Hidalgo remembers the first time she saw Olivia Miles play. She was in elementary school and Miles, who was in eighth grade, had already started making a name for herself as a young standout point guard out of Phillipsburg, NJ, with a unique style of play and competitiveness.
“She was just killing it,” Hidalgo tells us in January, while on the set of their SLAM cover shoot, the first time Notre Dame has ever been on the cover. “It was just this little girl with goggles and a puff [hairstyle]. She started with the puff. She was just running up and down, killing our girls. I was like, Yo, this girl is tough.i> And to find out it was the Olivia Miles.”
Miles had also caught the attention of none other than Niele Ivey, too. Now in her fifth year as head coach at Notre Dame after 12 years as an assistant and associate head coach, Ivey saw an undeniable talent. “When she stepped on the floor, oh my gosh, she completely separated herself,” Ivey told USA Today in 2022. “How fast she was with the ball, the way she gets downhill, what an elite finisher she is. She reminded me of an NBA player with her skill set.”
And it was Ivey’s vision back then that would set the stage for the future of the Irish program. But it all started in Jersey. Miles went on to become a star at Blair Academy, averaging close to a triple-double as a junior with 13.6 points, 8.1 rebounds and 7.6 assists and winning a Prep A state championship in 2020. As a five-star recruit and the No. 8 ranked player in the class of 2020 (as well as the No. 2 point guard in the nation), she committed to the Irish as the first-ever early enrollee and, alongside Sonia Citron, was part of Ivey’s first-ever recruiting class.
https://www.slamonline.com/hannah-olivia-cover-story/
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