Lady Griz Orientation :: Alyssa Blanck

The legend was sitting in her living room and all Alyssa Blanck's dad wanted to do was talk about the good old days with BYU coach Jeff Judkins.

There was a lot to discuss, of course, how Judkins had played at Utah, had later coached at the school under Rick Majerus, highlighted by that magical run to the national championship game in 1998 that captivated the state.

Utah fandom ran deep in the family, you see, alma mater of Jeremy Blanck's parents, where he and his wife, Stacy, went and met, the reason he put that Utah Utes basketball in her crib when Alyssa, his firstborn, arrived, teaching her as early as possible that there was one and only one for this family.

Judkins took over the BYU women's team in 2001-02 and built it into a consistent winner, NCAA and WNIT trips arriving with regularity, and now he was in the Blancks' living room, there to see a player he'd been watching since her freshman year, and he was telling stories about Majerus instead of getting to the point, the real reason for his visit.

Was he going to offer her? Why else would he have paid a visit? It had to be for an offer, right? Right? Could everyone put the past aside and start talking about the future, her future?

She'd been going to his camps at BYU since she could first dribble a basketball, had wanted to play for no other coach in college, even if it was at odds with her loyalty to Utah. And now it was right there, in her living room, and could the conversation finally turn?

"I loved Jeff Judkins and the way he coached. I went to all his camps growing up," says Blanck, who was raised a few miles southeast of Salt Lake City, in Holladay. "I'm the biggest Utah fan ever but wanted to play for BYU because of him."

It was still the time of COVID, when NCAA rules and regulations were changing on a seemingly daily basis, players who had endured shortened or canceled seasons now being gifted a bonus year of eligibility, and Blanck was on the wrong side of that equation, a high schooler wanting a spot on a college team whose roster may or may not have space.

What did that mean for BYU? Is that why he had made a home visit, to let her down in person? Or to make an offer? And could the talk in the living room shift from then to now?

Finally, the words she'd been dreaming about arrived: I'd like you to come play for me at BYU. "That was a really special experience," Blanck says. "I was expecting it but still had that feeling in the back of my head. It was the best feeling ever. All of us were so happy. I did it. It was my dream and I did it."

And, so began the college journey of Alyssa Blanck, stunned late in her senior year at Olympus High, not long after being named the Utah Class 5A Player of the Year, by Judkins' retirement from BYU, staying with the school her freshman year under a new coach, Amber Whiting, before opting to move on.

Being offered a walk-on spot at Utah for the 2023-24 season, an opportunity she turned into a scholarship the next two years, with more drama arriving early in the 2024-25 season when Lynne Roberts, the day after the Utes blitzed McNeese State 118-50, announced she was stepping down to take over the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks.

A new head coach, Gavin Petersen, Roberts' longtime lieutenant, moving up from associate head coach, guiding the Utes forward, including last season when Utah traveled to Missoula and locked down the Lady Griz in a 78-38 victory at Dahlberg Arena.

With just over two minutes remaining in that game, Blanck checked in and in the final minute scored the game's final points, a 3-pointer, on the court she practices on now, the sideline last November where she turned to a teammate and said, I could see myself playing here next season.

She knew she would be graduating in the spring with a degree in strategic communications, knew she was willing to try something new, for the first time looking outside the Salt Lake City-Provo world she'd spent her life cocooned within.

"I remember looking at one of my teammates and saying, I'm going to come here next year," Blanck said this week. "I loved my experience at Utah but I was ready for something new and I really liked how the Lady Griz played. I could see myself fitting in with the offense."

What began years ago as a dream of a traditional college basketball experience – one school, one coach, four years, a single source of memories – has become a more modern tale – one school, one coach; another school, two coaches; a third school, another coach.

"It's been wild. It would have been nice to have a little bit of consistency but having the opportunity to learn from several super successful head coaches has been awesome," Blanck says. "I've learned in different ways than I would have if I had had just one head coach."

And in a way, it's when plans go awry that college athletics teach some of their most useful life lessons. Everyone would opt for the idyllic. It's when life throws curveball after curveball at you that a girl is being prepared for what's to come.

It's what Jeremy and Stacy have taught their four kids – Alyssa, the twins, Tommy and Will, Carly – how to commit to something, how to give it your all. No matter where it leads, the value comes from the journey, not only the destination, even if the path doesn't go as mapped out. Just, work.

"There is not one player at Montana or at Utah who didn't find themselves in the gym every day," says Jeremy. "It's what we emphasized with our kids, the word grit. Just the ability to get yourself in the gym every day with a ball.

"When it's not organized, when they don't have a trainer, when they don't have a coach, are they still going to the gym and working out? That's what separates players. There are enough girls with talent. It becomes separation after that, day in and day out for a long period of time, five, six, seven years.

"Alyssa made that decision at a really young age, and it will pay dividends in life, learning how to plow through adversity. It's probably what's helped her through some of the things she faced since she got into college."

Before that, before she even arrived, it was just two college kids falling in love, Stacy having gone, like her kids would, to Olympus High, her time at Utah split in two parts to make time for a mission to California. He prepped at Brighton High, did his mission in Belgium, then landed at the only spot imaginable, the University of Utah.

Alyssa arrived, then, 21 months later, the boys, twins, three kids, all under the age of two, now under one roof. "I worked and she stayed home," says Jeremy, a project executive for Okland Construction. "Then I'd come home and try to give her some relief. She deserves all the credit. It was chaos at our house until the kids started school."

But they had each other, those three, triplets in spirit, Alyssa setting up games of hot box in the backyard, games of whiffle ball, the driveway becoming a basketball court.

"My brothers changed my life in the best way possible," she says. "I always say we're triplets. We grew up together and were always competing. I would become their biggest fan and they were my biggest fans, too. They pushed me to be better and more competitive."

"It couldn't have been a more perfect situation for her or for them," Jeremy says. "They idolized her and she grew to idolize them. All three of them are very close. When they started playing sports, she was just as excited, if not more excited, about them playing."

The whole thing peaked in early March 2024, when Olympus won the Class 5A boys' basketball title on the court of Utah's Huntsman Center, where Jeremy fell for the Utes years ago, where Alyssa was finishing up her first year, where the twins were now celebrating, state champions as seniors.

"You can't even draw that kind of stuff up," says Jeremy.

This could have been a soccer story, after she got an early start in the sport, after she was, because of her hand-eye coordination and size, put in goal, because 6-foot-2 goalkeepers are one of the hottest items in the current era of the transfer portal.

She didn't need the thrill of scoring goals, like so many other players did. Her joy came from stopping them, from seeing a player with a gleam in her eye, thoughts of scoring, and grabbing that dream with her goalkeeper gloves and snuffing it out. "That was the best part of it," she says.

Jeremy got into golf at Brighton High, the sport that is still his passion, but his lifelong love has always been basketball. And that got passed down a generation, plus Stacy's family's genes, which spiked the twins to their heights of 6-5 and 6-3.

Alyssa would top out at 6-foot-2 and fall for basketball as well. "I ended up getting good at basketball and fell in love with it. It kind of took over my life and my world," she says.

But love and devotion can be different sides of the same coin, the latter, when it comes to sports, requiring a different level of commitment. It's the fine line walked by parents everywhere, who want something for their kids but can't want it more than they do.

"She wanted it and her mom and I wanted it for her as well," Jeremy says. "When you see college players, there is usually one parent who's passionate about things. I could have been that way a little bit. I got better as she got older, when you could see her own it and take over.

"It's trying to find that fine line of when to push and when not to. Any parent supplies the ways and means but at the end of the day, it's on them."

He did just fine. "He saw my potential," Blanck says. "I wouldn't be who I am without him. We used the driveway court, we used the church gym. I got a lot of shots up with him, pretty much every day.

"You need to decide if you want to do this or if it's just for fun. It took me a while to decide. What if I do this and don't get to where I want to be? I thought, let's do this. I put everything into it. I was ready to make that sacrifice."

You can see his golf influence in her even today, because no golfer just drives up to the course, sets their clubs down on the first tee and swings away. First, it's the driving range with a bucket of balls, each club dialed in, then it's the practice green. Then and only then are you ready to walk up to the first tee.

"I still start every shooting workout with my form shots," she says. "I can do them forever. It's getting your feet under you and feeling like you have your shot in the right place. I've shot thousands and thousands of them. I wanted to be a threat from all levels of the floor."

She got her start on a co-ed team, the Junior Jazz, and in the basketball world, there are no secrets. By the time she was in sixth, seventh grade, when she was already approaching six feet, head and shoulders above her peers, AAU coaches were already telling Jeremy, yeah, she's a college player.

She would be a four-year starter at Olympus High, Judkins revealing his interest in Blanck early on, when he attended one of her games as a freshman.

She was all-state four years, the Utah Class 5A MVP as a junior and senior but still operated a bit in the dark, in the shadow of the more heavily recruited Timea Gardner and Teya Sidberry.

Dixie State, now Utah Tech, was the first to reach out, later the first to make an offer. It's happening! Blanck thought. "Okay, now I need to get more so I can weigh my options," even though she had eyes only for one. "My dream was always to play for Jeff Judkins at BYU. They were really good at the time."

Then came the home visit, then the news broke that Judkins had decided to retire, just months before Blanck was going to move from her home to Provo, become a Cougar, her dream coming true.

"It felt like my world shattered in front of me. In a perfect world, I would have played there four years, gotten a degree and moved on with my life," she says. "At the time, it was really, really hard."

She spent the 2022-23 season at BYU but didn't play, a new coach with new ideas and maybe a different take on players they didn't recruit.

So, Blanck entered the transfer portal, was looking east, way east, like East Coast, before Utah finally reached out. Come as a walk-on, earn your way to a scholarship. "Me being a Utah kid and fan my whole life, I couldn't say no. I'll go earn a scholarship," she says.

Her first Utah team, in 2023-24, was loaded. Alissa Pili, Gianna Kneepkens, Kennady McQueen, all future professional basketball players.

Blanck's three-year stats at Utah – 52 minutes, 14 points and 22 rebounds in 23 games played – may not jump out at you but that doesn't list the hundreds of practices when the new Lady Griz went head-to-head with some elite talent.

"She's seen what the top end of collegiate women's basketball looks like," says Montana coach Nate Harris. "She's practiced against some of the nation's best players every single day, so she brings in a different perspective. She had the opportunity to learn a lot."

"It was awesome, an unreal experience," Blanck says of her time with the Utes. "I definitely got better regardless of how much time I was on the floor just because of the people I was surrounded by."

She even got the Judkins experience she thought she had missed out on. After taking the 2022-23 season off post-retirement, the coach joined the staff at Utah, becoming a Ute once again at the same time Blanck joined the program.

Then, a seed was planted in November, when Utah visited Montana and Blanck heard all the stories being told by Ute assistants and former Lady Griz Jordan (Sullivan) MacIntyre and Jace Henderson about this special place to which they were traveling.

Then, Utah's season ended in the first round of the WBIT and Blanck had a decision to make. "I thought she'd wrap it up," says Jeremy. "I told her to let it sit for a couple of weeks. She came back and said she would regret later in life not seeing what this year could have brought her."

But it had to be just right, a place that loved its basketball, where she would have a chance, for the first time in her career, to get impactful minutes, a place just far enough from home that it felt like an adventure but wasn't that far. And she could get an MBA in one year? Where did she need to sign?

She was in. She was so, so in. "I don't think she could have done this her freshman or even sophomore year, so the timing just fell into place," said Jeremy. "It was one of those things that felt right."

Felt right? During her on-campus visit, Harris told the family about the staff changes he was making, how he was bringing in the program's first-ever director of player development, a guy by the name of Tanner Lind. He operates out of Salt Lake City. Perhaps they'd heard of him?

Actually, that was one of the trainers Blanck had worked with in her career. "Another total coincidence. He lives two miles from our house. Every time she made a move, it felt like the right thing to do."

She became the final piece of the puzzle Harris was putting together for his 2026-27 roster. "We were looking for a solid, competitive player and she fit the bill," he said. "We wanted someone with some length, some experience, who wanted to compete for a spot.

"With her experiences, she has learned how to use her skill set to compete against people who are maybe longer or more athletic. She's seen a lot of different things through four different years of experiences. She has a lot of wisdom to pass on to our other players."

You might think a fifth year of college basketball, at a third school, under a fourth coach, might have worn a girl out. All it's done for Alyssa Blanck is hit the RESET button. It's reenergized her, this fresh start.

"I have nothing to lose. I'm going to give it my all, be all in in every aspect of my life," she says. "It's an opportunity to try something new, expand my horizons by getting out of Utah, make new connections, new memories."

It was a tailor-made situation, Blanck being one of five transfers on this year's team, one of nine newcomers. Sixty percent of the roster is new faces.

"I remember the first day, who are you and where did you play before this? Wake Forest. High Point. Columbia. It's crazy how we've all been so far apart and now we're all on the same team," she says.

"I've heard it feels different (from last year), with people who want to come in and compete. The coaches did an awesome job of getting girls who are talented and who want to compete, who want to make the Lady Griz better. We just need to pull everything together and we could be really, really good."

Yes, it's not lost on her that Montana plays at BYU in early November, then at Utah in mid-December. Would she be fine if the Lady Griz were to win at the Huntsman Center? "Oh, 100 percent. I don't ever want to lose a game, even if I'm a big Utah fan. I want them to be successful, just not against us."

Then it will be on to the Big Sky schedule, to Boise in March, the postseason, when Blanck has never missed a national tournament, going to the WNIT with BYU in 2023-23, to the NCAA Tournament with Utah in 2023-24 and 2024-25, to the WBIT last season.

Seems like five for five would be a fitting end to this wild journey. "That's the plan," she says.

If she's learned anything over the last few years, it's that things can change just like that. One day she's sitting in her living room waiting for the conversation to turn its focus to her, for Jeff Judkins to say those magical words, the next she's in Missoula, Montana, preparing to play for the Lady Griz, one final ride.

"We're people of faith. It feels like Alyssa's path turned out to her benefit, even if she didn't see it, if we all didn't see that at the time," says Jeremy.

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