(August 19, 2018) – Menlo School 2013 graduate Drew Edelman has signed to play professional basketball for A.S. Ramat HaSharon, a Div. I team in a suburb of Tel Aviv.

Edelman is coming off an outstanding seasons for UC-Santa Barbara for which she averaged a double-double in Big West play, and led the team in scoring with 16.2 points per game and rebounds with 9.6 per game in overall play. She was among the Big West Conference leaders in both categories, as well as field goal percentage at 57 percent. The forward was named to the all-Big West conference team.

Last summer she followed up a dominating performance as 2013 Juniors MVP of the Maccabiah Games in Israel, and again was tournament MVP after leading Team USA  to gold - this time in the Open Division.

“When I played in Israel last summer i was able to get a lot of exposure with coaches out there already and they knew i had one year left of college and could play pro afterwards,” Edelman said.

The league limits teams to to two American-born players, so Edelman worked to obtain dual citizenship, which became official this week. After the 2017 Games, she was contacted by an agent who works with many Jewish-Americans to get Israeli citizenship. “She knew what teams would be good for me and what my contract should look like,” Edelman said. “I am really excited to get paid to play, since it’s what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years of my life!”

Before earning her masters at UC-Santa Barbara, Edelman played for two seasons at USC, where she redshirted one season and graduated with honors in three years. Edelman was a two-time winner of UCSB’s top student-athlete award, the Golden Eagle Ring for achieving the highest GPA of any female athlete at the university.

At Menlo School, Edelman was named the San Mateo Daily Journal Player of the Year in 2013 after leading the Knights to a Central Coast Section title. That summer, she was named the MVP and won gold at the 2013 Maccabiah Games as a member of the U.S. U-18 team. She averaged 21 points and 14 rebounds per game her senior year, and was selected Prep2Prep’s CCS Girls Basketball Player of the Year.  As a junior, she averaged 19 points, 15.5 rebounds, and two blocks per game. Edelman also played volleyball for three seasons at Menlo.

“Since I started working with Drew as an eighth-grader she has improved every year,” Menlo coach John Paye said about the 6-foot-4 Edelman. “With her size, I always saw her as a professional player after college. In the last couple of years, it has been her fitness level that has been her biggest improvement. She has always been a good rebounder and scorer and now she is better at running the court.”

There was little downtime for Edelman, who was granted dual citizenship, this summer. She  played a few games with Paye’s TNT team in the Bay Area Pro-Am, along with 2018 Menlo graduate Mallory North,  who is headed to Occidental this fall, and Knights sophomore Avery Lee. She was also a constant in the performance room this summer with Director of Performance Jesse Lindenstein, and worked with a basketball trainer on shooting and ball-handling as the she continues to increase her versatility in the four spot.

“ I don’t know a lot about the style of overseas play,” she said. “I anticipate it’ll be much faster paced and the players will be more athletic.”

Edelman will be rooming with one or two other American players when she reports to camp at the end of September.