If I heard it from one Emmaus High School basketball fan, I heard it from a hundred. "That kid’ll never make it playing in college," they’d say, waving a hand in disgust. They were talking about Aaron Gray, the former Emmaus High center (Class of 2003) who went on to star for the University of Pittsburgh and then sign an NBA contract.

Almost every hoops fan in our school district -- if not in our entire county -- shared that view. I did, too. After all, a seven-foot kid should absolutely own the paint in high school hoops. He should be slam-dunking basketballs and opposing players with equal regularity. He should score 30 a game and pull down 15 rebounds without even trying.

Aaron never even approached that level of productivity, which is why so many local sports fans questioned the sanity of the Division I colleges offering him scholarships.

Is it possible that those professional recruiters, who make a living by identifying prospects and who manage hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of scholarship money each year, knew something that the average fan didn’t know?

Hard to believe, but yes.

They knew that high school heroics -- or lack thereof -- are often a poor predictor of college success.

That’s not to say stats are irrelevant. But relying on them to predict how a kid will perform at the next level is sort of like using a teenager’s babysitting skills to project how good a parent he’ll be. It’s gross oversimplification, to say the least.

The wild card, of course, is how the high schooler will respond to the much greater levels of freedom, responsibility, pressure and competition he’ll face in college.

One of the biggest shocks to high school student-athletes is how competitive practice is at the collegiate level. Many -- if not all -- of their new teammates were just as "highly decorated" as they were during their high school careers. They were All-Conference, All-Area -- and sometimes even recognized on a state or national level. They want to start and play just as badly as the next person. And they aren’t going to give up that dream without a fight.

That’s why it’s best for high school athletes to leave their newspaper clippings and All-Star plaques at home. Forget all the sweet talk they heard from coaches during the recruiting process, too. High school is over. They’re starting completely from scratch. The only way to earn the respect of their teammates and coaches is by demonstrating superior commitment and performance from Day One.

College administrators, teachers and coaches have little sympathy for kids who don’t recognize the need to carve out a new legacy of success. They’ll offer guidance and advice. But they’ll also demand a level of personal accountability that far exceeds anything most kids have to shoulder in high school.

Parents can forget about trying to influence the process. That ship has pretty much sailed, once we move them into the dorm and drive away from the campus. If they’re going to cut class, skip workouts, eat poorly, party till dawn and then whine about unfair teachers and coaches when they find themselves failing in sports and studies – all we can do is cajole and fret from afar. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a nine-minute cellphone call once or twice a month, and maybe an occasional email reminding us they need pizza money by this weekend.

Taken together, these challenges amount to a major culture shock when a high school kid takes his game to the next level. And all the touchdowns, goals, baskets, home runs, and record-breaking split times he achieved in his hometown tell us absolutely nothing about how well he’ll adjust.

On the other hand, becoming the starting center for an NCAA tourney team as a junior, then leading the Big East in rebounds and double-doubles, then signing with the Chicago Bulls, tells us plenty.

Congratulations, Aaron. We get the message. You’ll do just fine.

Home   Feedback