By the time Ashlynn Shade’s first season at UConn ended — where she won Big East Freshman of the Year and finished third among the team’s healthy players in scoring (11.0) and shooting (48.1) — it was easy to forget her early struggles.

Through the first seven contests, Shade averaged just 5.0 points and surpassed the 20-minute mark just a single time. In the second game of the regular season, she didn’t even play in the Huskies’ loss to NC State. Then she entered the starting lineup when injuries struck, put up 17 points against Ball State on Dec. 6 and never looked back.

Shade’s emergence didn’t surprise those close to her, though. Two key figures in her basketball career — Natalie Morse, Shade’s personal trainer and a close friend, along with Matt Marvin, the former girls’ basketball coach at La Lumiere — helped explain what makes her special.

Morse remembers the first time she saw Shade play.

During a basketball camp in Noblesville where high school players were supposed to be training younger kids, a sixth-grader stood out above the rest: Shade.

“No offense to the high school kids, but Ashlynn was the best player in the gym,” Morse said.

As the high schoolers took the campers through a variety of drills, Shade worked at a different.

“She was in a line of probably 30 kids and the high school kids were standing in front of them and the younger kids were lined up imitating what the high school kids were telling them to do,” Morse explained. “She was doing simple ball-handling drills imagining she's gonna do that ball handling drill in the national championship. She was just getting after it. I'm like, ‘Oh my gosh, I've never never seen a kid work like that.’”

That motor is central to Shade’s success.

“Her drive and her work ethic, honestly, I've never I've never seen a day where it drops off,” Morse said.

When practice wrapped up at La Lumiere, Marvin would challenge Shade to make as many consecutive free throws as she could with the goal of increasing that number throughout the season.

There was one problem, though. The coach assumed Shade would ever miss a free throw.