This feature originally appeared in the 2024-25 Winter edition of the Cal Sports Quarterly. The Cal Athletics flagship magazine features long-form sports journalism at its finest and provides in-depth coverage of the scholar-athlete experience in Berkeley. Printed copies are mailed four times a year to Bear Backers who give annually at the Bear Club level (currently $600 or more). For more information on how you can receive a printed version of the Cal Sports Quarterly at home, send an email to CalAthleticsFund@berkeley.edu or call (510) 642-2427.
 
 
California women's basketball player Jayda Noble, who transferred to the Golden Bears from the University of Washington, has been playing basketball for most of her life.
 
But Noble has also slowly developed another talent which was inspired by her adoptive mother, Alicia, in the form of artwork - specifically on shoes and clothing. It's something that Noble has turned into a business of sorts and hopes to continue with well after college.
 
From an early age, Noble remembers her mom always putting together "next level scrapbooks" as Noble described them. Her mother would put the scrapbooks together to ensure that she and her brother, Will, preserved every memory of their childhood possible.
"She wasn't just gluing pictures on paper," Noble said. "She would draw and paint stuff on little card stocks and then glue in a million different things."
 
Noble credits her mom with influencing her passion for art at an early age as she remembers going from basketball practice to crafting sessions with her friends.
 
"My mom made sure there was always time built in for me to be creative," Noble said.
 
Noble's first memory of something she painted was a painting she made in the fifth grade of her wearing her favorite basketball shoe at the time - a pair of Nike Hyperdunks.
 
However, it wasn't until very recently that Noble's passion for art turned from a hobby into something more serious. In the summer of 2022, Noble began producing artwork for her older sister - Gabby Williams of the Seattle Storm. Soon after, some of Williams' Storm teammates started noticing and reposting photos of her work. It was then that Noble decided to create her own art page on Instagram under the moniker of @jayyycasso – a combination of her name and the famous painter Pablo Picasso.
 
Up until that point, Noble had mainly been doing traditional acrylic based paintings. But her sister convinced her to try something new.
 
"(Williams) saw me painting one time at her house after she came home from practice and she said, 'This is really good. I got these jeans. You have to paint on them,'" Noble said. "She loves anime, so I did some cool anime stuff on there for her and she ended up wearing them out prior to a game for a walkout fit.  After that, everybody was coming up to me. That was the first time I had somebody showing off what I could do, and that helped a lot."
 
With Storm players posting photos of her work, Noble started receiving requests for projects from fans, donors and staff of the team. She credits the Storm community for getting her a lot of attention as she was starting out.
 
After showcasing a couple of her pieces at an art exhibit in Seattle, Noble's teammates at Washington were so impressed they suggested that she do her own show. She made paintings and worked on shoes until she finally had enough pieces of art to do a show at the Gallery Axis in Seattle.
 
Williams suggested she do a painting of one of the Storm's players, Jewell Lloyd, to display at the show. Williams invited Lloyd to come to the exhibit and check out the artwork and the painting of her. Noble gifted her the painting, which set in motion her next fashion project.
 
"To be honest, it was just original," Lloyd said. "For me, it was the first time art actually meant something to me. Her art spoke to me, and in that moment, I knew if I did any kind of art work, Jayda would be involved."
 
"A couple months go by after the exhibit and (Lloyd is) checking in to see how the season's going," Noble said. "She texted me and said, 'If I sent you a pair of blank GT Cut (sneaker) templates, can you just freestyle and send me eight designs by Wednesday?'— which was in two days."
 
Noble was on a road trip to Pullman, Washington, at the time but that didn't stop her from coming through for Lloyd. She bought colored pencils at a nearby gas station and got to work on the designs as soon as she arrived at the team hotel. Using the only guidance Lloyd gave her in terms of her favorite colors, Noble was able to turn around the designs in time, and Lloyd gave them to her shoe sponsor at Nike to get printed.
 
"Months go by and I'm sitting there on my phone painting, and a couple of my friends were calling me and telling me to go on Instagram," Noble said."
 
That's when Noble first saw the shoes she made for Lloyd as the Storm posted pictures of them and tagged her. Lloyd ended up wearing the shoes in a game that season, leading to more and more requests for Noble.
 
"After the Jewel stuff came out, my art page started growing," Noble said. "I started having orders through people DMing me and I had to go through them all and filter them."
 
Noble ended up creating a Google form to handle all the orders, and her roster of clients now features professional and college athletes around the country, including Michael Penix (NFL), Paolo Banchero (NBA), Jamal Crawford (NBA), Paige Bueckers (UConn) and Hailey Van Lith (TCU). Noble also plans to design shoes for the entire Cal women's basketball team and staff this season.
 
The growing demand for her artwork, along with the demands of being a Division I student-athlete and a student at the top public university in the country, has made it a balancing act for Noble to take care of all of her responsibilities.
 
"I just try to look at everything as an opportunity and just be grateful for it," she said. "I think because I always have kept the art stuff really fun and light and just therapeutical for me, that it's always a plus. It helps being in a situation like Cal, where I have coaches like (head coach) Charmin (Smith) who can understand that I do what she needs me to do but I also do this."
 
While Noble has ambitions to play basketball professionally after college, she knows that her artwork can open doors for her and also allow her to give back.
 
"I'm a full believer that because you hop off another path doesn't mean the next one can't be just as great," Noble said. "I hope I can take it as far as I can so that I can impact youth and show them opportunities that I never had."