GRAND FORKS — UND women’s basketball started talking to Grand Forks Central senior Lauren Reardon in February.
Right away, Reardon knew there wasn’t anywhere else she wanted to play.
“I just remember being in first grade, just starting basketball and going to UND games,” she said. “I just imagined myself playing there.”
After two unofficial visits and playing in the Fighting Hawks’ elite camps this summer, Reardon announced her commitment to UND Thursday.
“I didn’t ever think that that would be able to come true, but I’m just so grateful that it is,” she said. “I grew up around UND. I have season hockey tickets, I went to football games. I went to basketball games. So it just doesn’t even feel real that I’m able to play for the same team that I got to watch growing up.”
Reardon, who set North Dakota’s single-game scoring record with 61 points in February, will be a preferred walk-on at UND.
She had some interest from other area schools, but once she talked with UND coach Mallory Bernhard and her staff, Reardon didn’t focus on other recruitment.
“After (UND) offered me, I chose to go there,” she said, “and I didn’t really put a lot of time into the recruitment for other coaches.”
Eric Hylden/Grand Forks Herald
Reardon doesn’t have a projected role at UND yet, but she’s focused on “working on what I know I need to work on,” she said.
That will start in December with Central — a team still without a head coach.
When Reardon joins the Hawks in the fall of 2025, she’ll become teammates with former Grand Forks Red River star guard Jocelyn Schiller.
It won’t be the first time the two will play together. They played on the same travel team when Reardon was in fifth grade and Schiller fourth.
“We come from very different programs right now,” Reardon said, “and I just think it’ll be a lot of fun to get to be connected to girls that were always rivals.”
Reardon joins Lauren Hillesheim and Kendra Harvey as the third commit in UND’s 2025 recruiting class. Hillesheim, from Hopkins High School, and Harvey, a senior at Byron, are both Minnesota recruits.
