Ansley Gavlak
| Special to USA TODAY
FORT WORTH, TX — When she’s not on the court, Texas forward Justice Carlton is baking cookies.
If you’re wondering if they’re good, just ask her teammates.
“They’re the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” senior Sarah Graves said.
What started as baking for her teammates and managers for fun has grown into a full-fledged business: J’s Rollin In Dough.
After hours of practice on the basketball court and in the weight room, Carlton spends six hours a day baking cookies to fulfill her orders – or sometimes, simply for fun.
“Anytime that I get out of practice around 5 I’m so happy because I just go home and bake,” Carlton said.
Carlton’s love for baking dates back to her childhood.
“My mom worked over the summers, so when we were out of school it was so boring,” she said. “But the Easy-Bake Oven and the cake pop machine saved my life.”
Over winter break, she and her mom began discussing the possibility of creating a business of her own. They decided she could use her NIL money to form a limited liability company and obtain her food handlers license, so she did just that.
In just three months of business, she’s received more than 100 orders and has gained nearly 1,200 followers on Instagram. She takes orders through a form linked in her Instagram bio.
“It’s funny to see athletes do other things they are passionate about because they put the same focus and intensity into it,” Graves said. “And I can tell she has that for baking.”
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Last month, Carlton baked a batch of cookies for the “College Gameday” staff in hopes of gaining some media attention. The following month, the SEC Network staff ordered a batch at the SEC tournament and tried the cookies on live TV.
“I used basketball as my platform, which (associate director of communications Jeremy Rosenthal) really helped me do,” she said. “I’ve just kind of been getting my name out there, so that’s been something that’s really fun.”
The flavors offered are chocolate chip, cookie monster, cookies n’ cream, red velvet, brown butter salted caramel snickerdoodle and her newest flavor, sugar cookie. She also takes requests.
“She made a banana pudding cookie recently,” freshman Aaliyah Crump said. “I think that one was my favorite.”
While many of her orders come from her teammates, she recently received an order from the Longhorns football team for a team party and for a neuroscience class celebration.
In the future, Carlton hopes to move her business outside of the kitchen and onto the streets.
“I’ve put all my sales money aside and I want to start a food truck,” she said. “I think I would do something like a Crumbl Cookies on wheels.”
For now, Carlton has turned the oven off while she and the Longhorns prepare to face Kentucky in the Sweet 16 on March 28.
Ansley Gavlak is a student in the University of Georgia’s Carmical Sports Media Institute.
