Since her freshman year of high school, Stanford junior Cameron Brink has lost just 22 games.
His 159-22 record in that time includes a national championship in his first season with the Cardinal.
He has already confirmed that he will return for his senior season, during which he will be the centerpiece of the roster. This year, the 6-foot-4 forward is being lauded on watch lists as one of the best players in the country.
“There’s always pressure,” Brink said. “I’m good at putting more into myself. Even last year, I was very afraid of losing and I think that was the wrong motivation. This year, I’m putting it into wanting to win and finding the right kind of pressure.”
Brink was one of the September recipients of the CALHope Courage Award, given by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) to California student-athletes who are overcoming the stress, anxiety, and mental trauma associated with personal difficulties and adversity.
She has been open about her mental health issues that were triggered at the start of the pandemic. The Cardinal spent nine weeks on the road during his national championship run due to COVID protocols that prevented contact sports within Santa Clara County.
“Everyone has their way of coping,” he said. “I’m very good at being vulnerable. Whenever I’m in a bad mood or not having a good day, the people around me will know. Mental health should be seen as hygiene, like brushing your teeth every day, you should monitor yourself, so I haven’t been afraid to share that I’ve struggled mentally.”
During that 2020-21 season, Brink didn’t see his parents for months for the first time in his life. His mother, Michelle Bain-Brink, was unable to see the games in person until the Pac-12 tournament.
Her only run-in with her daughter at the Final Four in San Antonio came about by chance: she had been in the lobby to deliver books to her daughter and they met through a door.
“He happened to go to the bus,” Bain-Brink said. “That was the closest we had been in months, and we both cried a little bit.”
Brink said that COVID gave him “time to sit with my thoughts, and that was really scary.”
Isolated in a way she had never been, like many college athletes, she felt she couldn’t trust her mind. Her stepsister, Sydel Curry-Lee (Stephen’s sister), has helped her open up.
Fred Luskin, the director of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects whom Brink calls the “happiness professor,” speaks before each Tuesday practice about mental health. Brink credited her for some of his coping mechanisms. He also sees a sports psychologist at Stanford.
Attention has also followed Brink and his family. She has more than 28,000 followers on Instagram and has started getting sponsors from social media like Netflix and Urban Outfitters as she navigates the world of names, images and likenesses (NILs).
“It can be surreal, for her and for us,” Bain-Brink said. “The other day on a bench, a little girl asked, ‘Are you Cam Brink’s mom?’ It’s interesting to have a personal identity and then be the parents of your child for other people.”
Entering her third season, Brink is already a national champion, a Naismith Defender of the Year finalist, a two-time Pac-12 champion and a member of the preseason Pac-12 First Team. Last season, Brink shot 55% from the floor (22nd in the nation) and led the Cardinal in scoring (13.5), rebounding (8.1) and blocks (2.6).
“It’s going to be very difficult to handle this year,” teammate Haley Jones said. “He’s improved a lot more, and he already had a great year last year.”
Stanford has been a part of Brink for longer than it has been on the list. She was recruited as an 8th grader from a camp where she battled a college roster at the time after advancing up the age group each day. She was recruited by then-Associate Head Coach Amy Tucker shortly after.
“I saw her get a rebound and she started dribbling down the other end of the floor and ended up on the other side with a European move,” the former Cardinal assistant coach said. “I went to our current associate head coach, Kate Paye, and said, ‘We have to offer him.'”
At the end of the camp, Tucker offered Brink the scholarship. Brink, then 13, thought it was an offer for the next camp, not to join the Cardinal.
The offer came two years after he started playing basketball. Brink was reluctant to participate in the sport that his parents played in college. While she was in Amsterdam, she finally relented after Sonya Curry, Steph’s mother and Brink’s mother’s college roommate, convinced her to do half a day at a men’s basketball camp. By the end of the week, she was asking to participate in the full days.
“She is very competitive,” Bain-Brink said. “That fall she went back to school and joined the basketball team. She was the youngest person on the team, and in Europe she was different, they had lower rims and no rear fender. But she tasted success.”
In another universe, Brink might have been a dual athlete at Nebraska, who offered him a volleyball scholarship. She led her high school to a state championship as a middle blocker, but basketball had become her passion.
Brink was ranked No. 3 in the nation after three seasons with Mountainside High School in Beaverton, Oregon. He won the Gatorade Oregon Player of the Year twice and a McDonald’s All-American. She received offers from Oregon and UConn before settling on Stanford.
“Cam really does it all,” Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer said. “She shoots the ball, she can run the floor. The only thing that really held her back last year was foul trouble, and that’s something she’s gotten better at in practice.”
Brink, the goddaughter of Sonya and Dell Curry, has been getting 3-point lessons from Steph as she looks to improve her perimeter game.
“She has refined her offensive game,” Tucker said. “She has worked to extend her offensive game to all three, which is a great move for her future.”
Brink knows that she represents part of Stanford’s future hope. Lexie and Lacie Hull are gone this season. Next season, Jones will be.
The urgency added to his development has also helped his thinking.
“I’m learning what it means to be a leader,” Brink said. “It’s not just basketball, but school and everything else. I want to be a resource, to freshmen, to anyone who needs it.”
Marisa Ingemi is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected]
