STANFORD, Calif. – Stanford signees Lara Somfai and Hailee Swain are two of 50 players selected to the watch list for the Naismith Trophy High School Girls’ Player of the Year the Atlanta Tipoff Club announced last week, prior to their signings. Stanford is one of three schools with multiple players on the list.
The pair is part of Kate Paye’s first signing class at Stanford, which also includes Carly Amborn (Larkspur, Calif./San Domenico School), Alex Eschmeyer (Boulder, Colo./Peak to Peak Charter School) and Nora Ezike (La Grange, Ill./Lyons Township).
Stanford’s class is one of the nation’s strongest, collectively rated No. 3 by espnW HoopGurlz prior to Somfai’s commitment on Wednesday morning.
Somfai, a 6-foot-4 forward, is the No. 16 prospect in the espnW HoopGurlz Top 100. A Basketball Australia veteran, she has represented her country at several international competitions around the globe. She was in Mexico this past July along with Alex Eschmeyer and Hailee Swain for the FIBA U17 Women’s World Cup, where she led Australia to a fifth-place finish, pacing her team in scoring by averaging 14.4 points and 5.3 rebounds in seven games.
A month prior, Somfai was named to the All-Star Five at the FIBA U18 Women's Asia Cup in China, averaging 17.6 points and 10.8 rebounds as swept its five games en route to its second consecutive title. Somfai also averaged 14.8 points and 11.5 rebounds for her country at the 2023 FIBA U17 Women's Oceania Championship and 16.0 points and 5.0 rebounds at the 2023 U16 Women's Asian Championship.
The 5-foot-11 Swain is another five-star prospect rated as the ninth-best player in the country. She has won a pair of gold medals playing for the United States, the first at the 2023 FIBA U16 Women's Americas Championship, where she averaged 10.3 points, 2.8 rebounds, 1.7 assists and 2.5 steals, and alongside Eschmeyer at last summer’s FIBA U17 Women's Basketball World Cup, where she put up 10.7 points, 4.0 rebounds and 2.0 assists in seven games.
Swain has been committed to Stanford since July 2022. As a junior, she averaged 23.9 points, 5.9 rebounds, 3.6 steals and 2.8 assists per game, as Holy Innocents’ went 24-7 and reached the Georgia High School Association AAAA quarterfinals.
Two Stanford student-athletes have won the Naismith Trophy High School Girls' Player of the Year award, Chiney Ogwumike in 2010 and Haley Jones in 2019.