In an era of amateur basketball that runs on publicity and promotion, Fope Ayo is a stark outlier.
The Methuen, Mass. native (her first name is pronounced like “Foh-pay”) has no social media presence as part of a family rule. To find the latest Ayo updates, you’ll have to follow the Mass Rivals accounts or search for a rare highlight tape online. And she has plenty of off-court interests; Ayo was just a camp counselor at the Ron Burton Training Village in August, where she spent most of that time without a phone, instead taking graphic design lessons and building battle robots.
But Ayo’s name is rapidly ascending regardless of her low profile. In roughly four years, the 6-foot-4 center for Austin Prep has risen from a complete basketball beginner to a nationally-ranked Power Five prospect.
This summer, Ayo raked in scholarship offers, landed at No. 56 on ESPN’s national 2026 class rankings and most recently earned an invite to the prestigious Wootten Top 150 camp in September. Her sudden stardom has validated the 1-on-1 workouts and trial-and-error games that tested her confidence.
“Encouragement from everybody around me is always really helpful,” Ayo said. “My parents, my friends, teammates, Coach U (Ushearnda Stroud) — and then just hanging out with other people who also have the same goal as me, seeing they're not stressed like that, and just knowing that it's alright. I'll get there. I just need to put in the work to get there.”
Ayo is honest: basketball is a sport she had to learn to love.
When she was entering sixth grade, Ayo and her family were at Wal-Mart and crossed paths by chance with Rivals director Scott Hazleton. Hazleton then came up to the Ayo family as they were leaving, asked Ayo if she had ever played basketball, and invited her to come to some smaller workouts.
Ayo had played before, but she wasn’t passionate. She knew everyone assumed she was a basketball player because she was tall, when Ayo in fact grew up a dancer and swimmer. But Ayo coincidentally went to the same All People church in North Reading, Mass. as Stroud, the Rivals girls program director and coach.
She decided to give the sport a real chance. During the summer before Ayo’s freshman year, Stroud wanted to give her a chance too.
“I had watched her on one of our other courts, and I kind of went over and said, ‘It's either now or never,’” Stroud said. “‘We're gonna take you from basically the kiddie pool, and I'm gonna throw you in the deep end, and I just want you to be able to be out there and run. I want everyone to be able to see you run — just sprinting up and down the court.'”
Ayo took off. She spent her freshman year of high school at Central Catholic, then had a strong 2023 AAU summer where she picked up offers from programs like Ole Miss and Providence. Then she transferred and joined Stroud at Austin Prep. Last year was another experiment. Austin Prep didn't have another center like her in the rotation, so Ayo played major minutes on a NEPSAC team, but also couldn’t shy away from opponents.
“I at first felt everybody was staring at me. Everybody thought that I was supposed to be good, and I wasn't,” Ayo said. “I was not good, like, at all, and I felt like everybody expected me to be good, and so I felt like I was kind of just disappointing everybody who was watching me.
“But as I’ve gotten better, and I’ve learned that everybody kind of knows where I am — I'm not surprising anybody — and with Coach U helping me, I've enjoyed it a lot more because I've gotten better. I've enjoyed having a love for the game. I like the pace; I like how everybody has a role on the team, but you’re not stuck and confined to that role.”
Ayo often worried about people questioning why she didn’t dominate games at her height. Before her sophomore year, when Ayo was playing on the top Rivals team as a 15-year-old, she developed a friendship with teammate Grace Oliver (Norwell, Mass.), another nationally-ranked forward who is starting her freshman year at Colorado.
“She really encouraged me,” Ayo said. “She still texts me sometimes, she congratulates me on different things, so she really encouraged me. When I was struggling because I was young for the team — I went from being on the 15U team to the 17U team, so it was a big jump — she really helped me a lot with that.”
Then this year happened. Ayo got off to a strong start during the first Adidas 3SSB live weekend in Norman, Okla. in May. On June 1, when college coaches could start contacting her directly, Ayo’s phone began blowing up.
This spring and summer alone, her verbal offers include: Kansas, Virginia Tech, TCU, Missouri, Miami, SMU, Boston College, Auburn, Memphis, Louisville and Princeton, among others.
“When coaches are telling me they see that I have potential — that they know that if I continue to work hard, I can get there — that helps make me feel confident that they believe that I can get there, and so I believe that I can get there too,” Ayo said. “With Coach U always talking to me about it as well, and saying that as long as I put in the effort, if I put in the work, I can get to that next higher level, that has helped me a lot, I think. (I) realize that, yes, I'm getting these offers, and yes, it's because I have potential, but they believe that I can get there.”
Ayo was genuinely shocked when her teammates and Coach U bombarded her with congratulatory texts after she earned the ESPN ranking in June. She didn’t land on the list just for being tall; Ayo has already become an imposing interior finisher on offense and a shot-swatting defensive anchor.
She has fostered a connection with the Burton family, including Connecticut Sun guard Veronica Burton, through her six years attending the Ron Burton camp. Ayo looks to Kamilla Cardoso and Tamari Key as stars who know how to be effective as tall centers. She also receives plenty of reminders from her father, Folarin, who was born in Nigeria before studying in England and moving to the United States.
“Coach U is always telling me, ‘Arms up! Arms up!’ That's kind of been drilled into my brain now at this point,” Ayo said. "But just because (size) is my main asset, I had to learn how to use it because after a while, being scored on repeatedly, it's frustrating. That shouldn't be happening. My dad's always telling me, ‘The paint is your space. You should take every person scoring on you personally.'”
Ayo and Stroud both know the accolades lead to increased external expectations. She’s quickly evolved from a relative unknown to one of New England’s most highly-touted prospects, and she’s not used to that spotlight.
“My goal or process with her is: We're going to be where our feet are right now,” Stroud said. “We're not going to think ahead, we're not going to live in the past. We're going to live here, right now and hold on to this, right now. That maturity that comes with it. So she's doing well, but (she’s) 16 — all of a sudden people from everywhere are saying that's the kid with the Kansas and North Carolina and Louisville (offers). Then people start really paying attention.”
