When Matt Breen, a longtime high school basketball coach, used to take his older daughter, Bailey, for workouts, she’d be at one end of the gym, tirelessly pushing her long frame as she practiced her shooting form, ball handling and footwork.

At the other end, her sister, Olivia – younger by four years and a still-small third grader – would be trying to find her own fun.

“Bailey would be shooting, and Olivia would be over there rolling around on the ground doing I don’t know what,” he said. “It wasn’t worth the fight to get her to be interested.”

But Olivia’s interest did build, coinciding with a well-timed growth spurt. As she grew taller, her passion and commitment to the sport grew with her.

Now she’s 13, 6-foot-2, and one of Maine’s brightest basketball talents.

And even before she enters eighth grade at Oceanside Middle School, NCAA Division I schools are taking notice.

Boston College offered her a full scholarship in June, Robert Morris University came on board in July, and Providence College earlier this month became the third to offer a scholarship. That’s likely to be just the beginning.

Scholarship offers before a player reaches high school aren’t unheard. Jordyn Crump of Biddeford, soon to be a sophomore, had an offer from Boston College before her ninth-grade season, and Anna DeWolfe was in eighth grade when she got her first offer from Villanova. Emily Esposito and Mackenzie Holmes of Gorham and Allie Clement from McAuley also had offers before their freshman seasons.

But such early offers remain rare. And for Breen, who still has a year left of middle school, they are a lot to process.

“I definitely say, ‘Wait, what’s going on?’ ” she said. “I wasn’t expecting it, but it’s what I’ve been working for. … But I never actually thought it would happen.”

She also isn’t taking her popularity for granted.

“They offered me off my potential, and potential, like Coach Amy Vachon of Maine (women’s basketball) said, it’s one of the most scary words,” Olivia said. “You have to still reach that potential. I still have to work for it, and I have to put in more work. I have to work harder now just so I can keep going on my trajectory.”

TALENT ON THE RISE

Watch Breen play, and it’s easy to see why Division I schools are interested.

There’s the combination of height and agility, which allows her to breeze past players she also towers over. There’s her versatility, allowing her to play point guard in middle school, center on her old Mode3 AAU team, and wing – a guard and forward hybrid – on her current Bay State Jaguars squad. There’s her outside shot, which leaves opposing coaches throwing up their hands in frustration, knowing that she can also dominate inside.

“She’s so talented for her age right now,” said Laurie Bollin, who played at Ithaca College and coaches Bay State, a Massachusetts-based travel team that plays in tournaments throughout the country. “She’s far beyond most kids her own age, especially given her size that she has coupled with her skill set and her feel for the game.”

All that said, such descriptions leave out what Breen loves best.

“I love getting to the rim,” she said. “Getting to the rim’s my favorite thing.”

Bollin said she’s amazing when she does so.

“She has an unbelievable knack around the basket, finishing on both the left and right side,” said the coach. “She can put the ball on the floor and get downhill. … What stands out the most is her ability to score the ball. She’s really good at offensive rebounds as well, and getting second chances for herself by being aggressive.”

Those skills are enhanced by a fiery, competitive demeanor, in sharp contrast to her off-court persona.

When not playing or practicing, she’s soft-spoken, with a self-diagnosed “laughing problem.”

On the court, she’s fierce.

“There’s something in her where she just goes off in these games, and you don’t know where it comes from,” said Bailey Breen, now a rising senior and star of the Oceanside High girls’ team, with Division I offers of her own. “She’ll get fiery if you get chirping at her. … She’ll take it, she’ll take it, she’ll take it, and then she’ll just go off. When that happens, you don’t want to poke the bear.”

‘BORN INTO THE GAME’

Matt Breen, a lobsterman, has coached boys’ and girls’ high school basketball for 20 years. His wife, Elizabeth, played at Husson University. Their daughters have always been surrounded by the game.

“I’d say I was born into the game,” said Olivia, who also has a brother, Tyler, 11. “As soon as I was born, I touched a basketball, I was around basketball, I was at all the games.”

But she took a lot longer than Bailey to warm to it.

“I didn’t really like playing,” Olivia said. “I did it because of my parents and (was) doing it for them.”

Her father could see that – and that his daughter was and is a fundamentally carefree person. She loves her friends. She loves camping with them and making TikTok videos and singing karaoke (Taylor Swift, Drake and Zach Bryan, in particular. She had hopes to see Bryan play in Foxborough, Massachusetts in July, but basketball got in the way).

“If I wasn’t in an AAU tournament, I’d be going to that concert,” she said.

Olivia’s not all basketball all the time. She likes trips to the beach, to lakes, to Destin, Florida, where her family heads each year and where she swims and shops (“not with my money but my parents’ money,” she’s quick to point out) to her heart’s delight. She loves strawberry acai lemonades from Starbucks and chicken nuggets, but she eschews one whole category of food.

“I don’t eat any seafood,” she said. “It’s something I absolutely refuse to eat. I’ll never give in.”

That may sound like blasphemy from a Mainer, let alone her father’s daughter.

“I’ve heard that one a few times,” she said. “I’ve tried (lobster) before, and I just can’t do it.”

She’s also a Christian who grew up going to Sunday school, and who cites Mark 5:36 – in which Jesus says “Don’t be afraid, just believe” – as a guide.

“I go with the flow,” Olivia said. “I always live by everything happens for a reason. Whatever happens, happens. You kind of put your faith in God’s hands and let him take over.”

Her father kind of took the same approach to Olivia’s early lack of interest in basketball.

“She was young, and I didn’t really want to force anything upon the kids,” he said. “I wanted them to love the game because they loved it, not because I loved it.”

Olivia said the change started about two years ago, when she was going into sixth grade and growing. She saw the direction the sport was taking Bailey and started to take basketball more seriously.

She began playing for the Maine Firecrackers, one of the state’s top travel teams, and competing against top young players. That competition invigorated her.

“(I saw) how much (Bailey) loved it, and I knew that I would love it if I started working for it,” she said.

Early on, she said, her big sister had to “drag me by my hair” to the hit the gym or go for a run.

Now Olivia enjoys the grind, whether it’s traveling for competitions, getting up shots early on a cold morning, or working on her fundamentals in a hot, stuffy gym.

“I’ve been in the gyms at 10 o’clock at night in the summers, and I’ve been in here at school at 5 in the morning with Bailey,” she said. “It’s 5:30 in the morning, and you’re like, ‘Oh, God, I have to get up and shoot a basketball.’ It’s just in the moment, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ But once you do it, you feel great.”

GETTING NOTICED

Division I offers for Maine players used to be a rarity. The state had no club teams that played on top travel circuits, so players had little chance to get in front of college coaches early. Instead, whatever attention they got came from their high school careers, which meant they were typically only on the radar of Northeast college coaches.

“Maine wasn’t a hotbed for recruiting for colleges outside of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and a little bit of Massachusetts,” said Don Briggs, co-founder and former coach of the Maine Firecrackers. He noted that when Joanne Palombo-McCallie was coaching the University of Maine to six straight trips to the NCAA tournament in the late 1990s, “her entire roster was pretty much made up of kids from Maine – but none of those kids had any line of sight or visibility to anything outside of Maine or New England.”

Briggs started the Firecrackers with Brian Clement in 2005 to try to pull together a team based on skill over age that would be able to compete nationally. Other elite club teams have followed and have given Maine players a chance to be seen younger. That’s led to Mackenzie Holmes going to Indiana, DeWolfe to Fordham and Esposito to Villanova.

Those players, Briggs said, started the wave that Olivia is riding now.

“It’s easier to get access to talent. It’s more visible than it was historically,” he said. “That’s taking nothing away from Olivia and her skill set. You’ve got to be good.”

She’s also benefiting from a fairly new phenomenon in the college recruiting scene.

“At higher levels, and maybe some low- to mid-major levels, they’ll see a very young player and want to be the first to offer,” said Boston University associate head coach and recruiting coordinator Brianna Finch. She’s seen it happen, she said, in the last five to eight years.

Tournaments such as AAU competitions and showcases allow coaches to see those players even earlier than they used to.

“There are more opportunities for younger players to be attending some of these national evaluation tournaments,” Finch said. “As a coach, I’m not going to a middle school game. … I’m not going to see that player unless they’re playing in a tournament at an evaluation period. And there weren’t as many opportunities.”

Olivia wasn’t expecting her first offer when she went to a Boston College elite camp with Bailey on June 21. For four hours, she played games and did drills while under the watch of Eagles coaches, including head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee.

NCAA rules prohibit coaches from contacting athletes until June of their sophomore year. But the next day, Bernabei-McNamee contacted Bollin, Olivia’s AAU coach, who then told Matt Breen to have Olivia give the BC coach a call.

“Her words were, ‘I’m offering you a scholarship to Boston College,’” Olivia said. “It feels unreal. … It felt amazing. I even teared up, and I’m not one to tear up.”

Hype and pressure, however, often come with all the attention.

“I feel like now that it’s out there, a lot of people are expecting me to play like a Division I basketball player. So it puts pressure on me to deliver what they want to see,” Olivia said. “Sometimes every person has a bad game, and this is like, well, I can’t really do that, because I don’t want to disappoint these people that think I’m really good. … These people who are like ‘Oh, she’s D-I,’ and then I go out and airball a (3-pointer).”

High school basketball is likely to bring more offers and phone calls. For now, the pressure is mostly internal, driven by her own expectations. And when that builds up, she finds a relief valve. She goes to the gym and gets lost in her practice. Or she puts on an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” and gets absorbed by the drama. Or she goes for a jog and gets swept away by the music she’s playing.

“I put both AirPods in and just blast music and run,” she said.

To get herself ready for the future, she often watches her sister. Bailey has played her whole Oceanside career in the spotlight, and with that attention comes detractors and fans of opposing teams sometimes chanting “overrated” to try to throw her off her game.

“She gets them,” Olivia said, gesturing to her sister. “(You need to) just be composed, and don’t let other people get to you about what they’re going to think. It’s not their opinion to have, you don’t need it. You know you’re good.”

Olivia calls her sister “my ride or die” and said she speaks to her just about everything.

“I go to her for every single question I have. She’s like my own personal help center,” Olivia said. “I ask her for help on big, little things. I even ask her ‘What the hell do I wear?’ … Literally, what do I wear to sleep? Those are the questions I’ll ask her.”

Soon to come are questions about dealing with recruiting, and staying focused. And Bailey’s ready to help.

“When I watch her play, I’ll give her feedback after, things like that. But really, for me, it’s off the court and mentoring her in that recruiting piece of it,” Bailey said. “Keeping it so it doesn’t stress her out and she doesn’t get in over her head. Just navigate her through that process.”

Olivia’s looking forward to the help – and to seeing where basketball can take her.

“My overall goal is to make it to the WNBA … especially now seeing where it’s going, and seeing that it’s actually turning into something like the NBA, with packed stands,” she said. “It’s turning into something that I really want to be playing in.”

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