When she started getting serious about basketball last year, it was very clear very quickly that Lanie Grant was a natural. This 11-year-old girl who plays in braided pigtails loved almost everything about the sport. Except for shooting. Lanie was scared to shoot the ball.
“I was awful at it,” she said.
She had no idea how much she was about to improve. Lanie spent the summer before sixth grade in the driveway of her home in the Richmond suburbs taking hundreds and even thousands of shots per day. By the first day of middle school, Lanie was no longer hesitant to shoot. It was the only thing she wanted to do. And she does it a lot.
Lanie Grant has taken nearly 65,000 shots since last summer. She’s now on pace to shoot the ball 100,000 times in one year.
What makes that even more astonishing is that she can watch every single one of those shots. Lanie has a comprehensive history of her own basketball development in the palm of her hand. She is young enough that her parents monitor her Instagram account, but she already has access to shot-tracking technology worthy of NBA teams.