“Mama, let’s bake a cake tonight, and maybe we’ll make some brownies too.” Just a ho-hum regular chill night for happy go-lucky, low-key Mika Jarrett who lives in Ventura County.
But flip that “hoop switch” and this 5-6 mighty-mite 2023 shooting guard lights up like a Christmas tree and the court becomes her oven.
She will bake the comp into toasty brownies and eat them one after the other on the way to a W for her Oxnard High squad, straight up, gulp, gulp!
Mika is the youngest of 3 athletic kids; her 2 older siblings are her big bros that sparked her love of the game at an early age (like 5 years old).
6-0 Stacy and 6-4 Kai were those rough and tumble playmates to get their lil sis toughened up. They were stars at Oxnard High, the big dawgs on campus a couple years ahead of her. Her loving moms is Kika, that determined single parent, spiritual and upbeat with her stellar personality.
Kika is loved by the local community and you have to admire that she never gets down from being physically disabled. No, Kika is about being positive and uptempo in convo and in her mentality on all things. Kika is also all about cheering all her kids “all the way up” at Oxnard High games.
My guy, former NBA star Gilbert Arenas, once spent an hour sitting next to me trying to get in my head about how he was always trying to score 100 points every game he played in. His mentality was to be a killa, a winner. That was a special time spent by a unique thinker in the game.
That’s how much Mika’s mom Kika loves to cheer her kids on. As much as Gilbert loves to score points, she’s trying to cheer worth a 100 points each night at her kids’ games. Kika is agent zero to me because impossible is nothing to her in her heart and soul as it relates to her kids’ futures.
How bad does Mika want a D1 scholly, how bad do her 2 big bros want it? It might bring a tear to your eye just to feel something that much, just to sense how bad this family loves this hoop game. All 3 kids are all chasing the precious.
What is the precious, E-Woods? It’s that D1/ D2 scholarship, higher education and a step up to higher quality of living no doubt.
Stacy, the eldest, is a savvy floor guard, flashy and quick. He was not deterred by having a baby with his girlfriend out of high school. He is still trying to do his best at hoop in JC, juggling feeding his baby with formula one moment and feeding his big men the ball down low at Ventura College the next.
Stacy’s road hasn’t been easy. He’s getting mixed results currently in his quest toward earning a basketball scholarship but you have to tip your hat at his effort.
Kai graduated from Oxnard High last year, but severely injured himself before he could make it to a prep school in Arizona and so he missed the whole basketball season.
Both big bros adore and support lil sis, but I’ll let Mika speak on it, “My brothers are the reason I play ball. We all have a big dream of going to college, playing college ball and doing right by our mom, our future families.
“We were taught at an early age to study, pull down the best grades we could. I want to go on to be a physiology major, maybe be a physical trainer as my career after college. I badly want to get that college degree.
“I don’t care if I stay local or go far away for college. It’s about that piece of paper setting things up for me in life, it means a lot to me. I love playing this game. Being on the court sets my heart free, for reals. When I’m set free between those 4 lines I’m really free.”
This woman-child who is averaging about 15 points per game for her prep team will just cut you up if you try stopping her. She gets to the rack with her razor-blade broad muscular shoulders and her zippy fast 1st step moves to the rim.
It’s just fun to watch Mika. She may be a lil shy off court, a lil introverted you could say, but one place she perks up and you can find her talking some serious "ish“ is during a game. She’ll shout out to opponents when she’s on the bench, supporting her sisters with “You can’t guard us! Is that all you guys got to try and stop us?”
But it’s all in good fun.
What impresses this writer most about Mika and her prep team? It isn’t just the 26-4 record after beating a very capable Westlake High squad in CIF playoff competition. Westlake is led by Siena University commit London Gamble and D1 level talent Mariah Elohim.
Most impressive is how much M-Jarrett makes this Oxnard HS team flow. If they would schedule more elite comp, you could see what their potential is. If Oxnard had played another county power, Camarillo High (28-1), that might’ve shown more of what they’ve got under the hood.
Camarillo is led by McDonald’s All-American and UCLA commit Gabbi Jaquez. Would Mika match G-Jaquez’s swag if their 2 teams played each other? I think that challenge would bring out Mika’s best and she could very well lead her team to a win over such an opponent like Camarillo.
How am I qualified to predict such things silly rabbit you say? I play ball with the Cam High girls team at my local 24 Hour Fitness, I know both these teams well.
Enough of my thoughts on Mika, let’s hear from her former prep coach Amber Warren who coached Mika for 2 years. Oxnard High is the house that Amber Warren built, she coached them for 8 years before moving on.
Amber speaks with mad conviction as somebody who is invested in these girls and their lives. She is also a dope trainer. Don’t read her words, feel her words on Mika, “I loved coaching Mika, she’s so receptive and humble.
“She became our team leader as a freshman because of her raw strength, her ability to create shots and manufacture her own offense, and just make her teammates better from the gravity she pulls in from the other team’s defense. She can change the momentum of a game by going downhill on a set of consecutive fast breaks. But at heart, Mika is just a great kid.”
Who else is high on Mika Jarrett? None other than legendary Ventura County legend to kids, the game mentor, coach, and trainer for Team 805, George Albanez.
G-Albanez is responsible for building elite skills for many hundreds of girls and boys and has helped them earn D1, D2, D3 scholarships through being associated with his travel teams and workouts since the early 2000’s.
Mika will play for George on a team he will co-coach with Gideon Gamble this summer called Sports Academy/GBL, a Cal Swish Nike team.
George says of Mika, “Don’t let her smile fool you! She is a walking bucket. We call her smooth because she makes the game look easy. You can tell she’s played against her brothers her whole life. She never gets rattled.”
Do you really want to get to know the inside real Mika? I asked her to share who is her favorite singer and song and she replied, Rihanna and Kiss It Better. Here are some telling lyrics of the sultry song: “
What are you willing to do?
Oh, tell me what you're willing to do?
Kiss it, kiss it better, baby
What are you willing to do?”
I see a parallel between Mika and the aforementioned Gabbi Jaquez. When both were going into their last AAU season they didn’t have a college dream scholarship offer. Gabbi didn’t yet have her UCLA offer but she had great advisors like her big bro Jaime Jaquez who is currently an All-Pac 12 performer at UCLA.
I imagine Gabbi took the advice others offered when she switched AAU teams to Nike EYBL circuit Cal Stars in a more competitive setting. And to her credit she upped her skills and went on a tear for the ages in the summer.
Mika doesn’t currently have a D2/ D1 offer, although some coaches have expressed interest in her in the past year. I have the same confidence in Mika as I had in Gabbi last summer who definitely Kissed It Better in her last AAU season and made her UCLA dream happen.
I’ve seen Mika play multiple times over the past couple of years. Although I’ve been a talent evaluator and prep hoops insider for 20 years, I still asked other experts in the area about Mika’s strengths and weaknesses.
They all told me what Mika needed to improve on to start earning those D2/D1 looks, “Her motor needs to rev up and stay rev-ed up for more of the game. She needs to work on her point guard skills and passing and to be more tenacious and disruptive on defense.”
That’s the magic formula for her to realize what she needs to do to increase her recruitment stock.
My advice to the reader? Go see this youngin’, she is fun to watch. She looks like a woman among girls and just makes her team better. It’s just as her former coach Amber Warren said.
Mika has helped Oxnard High 5-7 junior teammate Kristan Yumul by taking the attention away from Kristan in games so that she can free up and shoot her 3 ball shot which has been on “fy-yah.”
Now Yumul has been talking to programs like Pepperdine because Mika is opening the floor up for her (and everyone else on the team).
Mika doesn’t watch a lot of other prep players live or on TV, or the college or pro game much either. But she does appreciate NBA Sun star player Devin Booker. She likes the way he scores and always helps his team. She tries to play like him.
At heart Mika is just a humble kid, always giving credit to others, she just appreciates her teammates. For example, she wants to shout out her admiration of Oxnard teammate Ciara Gallagher and says of her, “She’s the most consistent of my teammates. She handles the ball the most and we jive off each other so much. Our chemistry is there a lot.”
Let’s feel some more lyrics from Mika’s favorite song:
“Just take it on back, take it on back
Mmm, do what you gotta do, keep me up all night
Hurting bad man, and it hurts inside when I look you in your eye.”
Now that we’ve all got to know Mika a little better, we’ll all be wondering what’s she gotta do to look her dream in the eye and make it so.
How dope it will be to follow and see her on that quest for the precious, getting that scholarship push as she plays for the Sports Academy Team/GBL Swish Team that will be coached by her trainer Gideon Gamble.
Gideon is that dope member of the all time great Atlantic Celtics AAU team (with Dwight Howard) who played at Winthrop before playing in the NBA G league. He’s such a powerhouse mentor and trainer for Mika on her AAU team and his words carry great weight in the girls basketball community.
Feel Gideon’s quote on Mika who trains with him 3 times a week at The Sports Academy, “Mika loves this game a lot and her confidence doesn’t shake easy. Her game never gets too high or too low and she’s just at the point where she’s building on all the tools she’s built into herself. She’s putting it all together right now. I have good confidence in her, she’s such a great kid.”
So really, how bad is Mika hurting to go for that prize? I can’t wait to go see her play again, to look in her eyes as she rolls downhill. She’s on this mission to bake another cake; maybe she’ll finish her AAU summer and sprinkle some D2/D1 offers on it for extra flavoring.
How exciting will all that be to see it play out in her young life?
Now check out the great story by Loren Ledin of the Ventura County Star on these Oxnard ballers>> Click here.
