Who is Roy Yuan? Meet the Stanford basketball player who is also a part-time YouTuber

Modified Feb 28, 2024 02:51 GMT

Roy Yuan of Stanford: basketball player and part-time YouTuber

NCAA college basketball is so full of interesting stories and players, with their journeys going far beyond the game of hoops itself. They might be among the best collegiate basketball players in the world, but some of them also dabble in other areas.

One of them is Stanford Cardinal guard Roy Yuan, who's also moonlighting as a YouTuber. A 6'1" guard out of San Jose, California, known for his outside shooting, Yuan's journey to Stanford's D1 men's hoops lineup is interesting in itself. Read on and you'll know why.

Roy Yuan, the YouTuber

As mentioned in the title, Yuan runs a YouTube channel to chronicle his life as a student-athlete in Palo Alto. His channel called "Roy" has three videos and 12.8k subscribers at the time of this writing. But he's also been featured in videos of other YouTubers, who most notably test their basketball skills against the D1 player.

One of Yuan's most recent videos is called "Day in the Life," chronicling Stanford's gameday against the USC Trojans and LeBron James' son Bronny. In the video, he also mentioned that he's studying computer science at Stanford.

Here's another video featuring Yuan and mukbang content creator Kenny Chao, showing just how skilled the Stanford guard is compared to a casual hooper. The game was relatively close, but one could see that Yuan wasn't even trying that hard and he could've ended the game way earlier if he wanted to.

Roy Yuan before Stanford

Before going to Stanford, Roy Yuan was already making a name for himself as a high school hooper, though he was still flying under the radar. As a member of the St. Francis high school varsity team in Mountain View, CA, Yuan was known as a knockdown shooter, being the record-holder in the West Catholic Athletic League for most threes made in a season (via GoStanford.com).

His long-range shooting helped him score over 1,000 points in high school. After his time in St. Francis, he played AAU ball with Tyler Johnson Elite, where he continued his high-scoring ways: averaging 24.4 points, four assists, and four rebounds per game.

Roy Yuan, former manager-turned-walk-on

A lot of NCAA D1 basketball players get recruited out of high school, but not Yuan. When he entered Stanford, he wasn't just flying under the radar, he was completely out of it. So when he started, he was actually a senior student manager for the Cardinal, alongside fellow senior student Josué Gil-Silva.

Yuan along with Gil-Silva was then promoted to walk-ons by Stanford coach Jerod Haase last December (via Stanford Daily). According to Haase, the reason for the promotion was how hard they worked in practice and how dedicated they were to the team.

When asked about his promotion to walk-on, Roy Yuan had this to say (via The Stanford Daily):

“Basketball is a big part of my character. Not a lot of Asian parents, especially from the Bay Area, really push their kids into athletics, much less pursuing college athletics. It feels good knowing that I can look [my parents] in the eye and be like, ‘Thanks for supporting my dream,’ and I was actually able to do something with it.”