2022 Valedictorian Ella Bradley

New Zealander Ella Bradley, a chemistry major with a 4.0 grade point average, will speak to the class of
2022 as valedictorian.
A key member of the USU Eastern basketball team, Bradley arrived on campus in the fall of 2020. After a
successful first year of online learning during the COVID pandemic, Bradley returned to complete her
degree and was in the 98 th percentile across all colleges in her ACS final exam in chemistry.
Bradley attributes her success to her lecturers and basketball coaches, who allowed her to balance time
between the classroom and court.
Born in England, Bradley spent her first five years living in north London where she started her
Montessori schooling journey. Price has been to her liking both in population and scenery. When her
parents Tania Smithe and Colin Bradley returned to New Zealand, Bradley moved from a city of nine
million to the town of Cambridge on the North Island. Cambridge, with a population of 21,400, was a
finalist in the 2017 and 2019 New Zealand’s Most Beautiful Large Town awards.
Bradley has two younger sisters. Her hobbies include netball, going to the beach and horseback riding.
Her love of sports quickly became apparent in the outdoor and sports mad country. She played several
sports competitively through secondary school and won numerous awards and national titles prior to
graduating.
Her love of basketball began at St. Peter’s Cambridge, a private Anglican secondary school where the
head coach Leanne Walker was a two-time Olympian and a former player on the Tall Ferns, New
Zealand’s premier women’s basketball team.
Bradley’s high school team won four national championships in five years. As a New Zealand age group
representative, Bradley played basketball in Australia, India, Malaysia, Greece, and Belarus.
In addition to her sporting successes, Bradley achieved academic honors, graduating high school in 2019.
An opportunity to continue with her basketball and academic goals became available at USU Eastern
and she began her Associate of Science degree and looks to continue her studies in chemistry, biology
and calculus.