He can cross you up like twister, he can knock down three’s like it’s nothing, and he can blaze across the court in a blink of the eye; Jackson Freeman is rising to the top coming into the 2020 Ladue Basketball season. Freeman has earned a full-time spot this year on junior varsity and has had some time practicing and playing up to varsity level basketball for Ladue. Being a freshman, Freeman appears to have a great future ahead at Ladue and is striving forward every day.

“So far, the varsity team has been really good. The JV team is, it’s pretty decent,” Freeman said,” The whole program so far has been running well, the coaches are really good and it’s super-efficient how they schedule and how they run practices.”

Freeman has been playing basketball since second grade and has been playing at a high level of basketball since fifth grade. Going into his first year in high school, being a freshman playing up can be rough at times and challenging, but Freeman has taken this challenge and pushed forward.

“All the upperclassmen are really supportive, It’s really fun to get to play those guys, they push you to become better every day,” Freeman said,” The Junior Varsity team has been really lenient because I’m not practicing with them a lot but it’s really fun with them as they don’t push me as hard as Varsity, but when I play with varsity it’s a lot of pressure to not mess up.”

Freeman is commonly spotted in the weight room during seminar putting in the work and always staying after practice and working in the gym to better perfect his shot. Over this past summer, Freeman worked about three to four times a week shooting and competing with others at the Clayton Center.

“I spent a lot of time over the summer, more than past summer’s playing basketball at the Clayton Center… I played some summer league here for Ladue but not much,” Freeman said,” When I went to the Clayton Center I competed and played a lot with Chase Linden and Jimmy Gui, we played against each other and got shots up all the time.”

Through having fun and competing against each over this summer, Linden was right alongside Freeman the whole time. Linden and Freeman met at Reed Elementary and have been friends ever since.

“Over this past summer, he helped me improve my abilities and get in better basketball condition, he also made it more fun to have one of my closest friends play with me and have a good time,” Linden said,” Jackson is one of the most fun people I know and I always have fun with him so I value our friendship a lot and don’t want it to fade away.”

As Freeman continues with his success at Ladue he has aspirations to play in college and overall become a great basketball player at Ladue. Freeman is also planning on joining the Ladue baseball team this spring, as he is quite a good baseball player too.

“Jackson is both a leader and a role model to me because he always does the right thing, he doesn’t make dumb decisions, he works hard in and out of school, and he is a great person to meet or talk to,” Linden said.