CURTIS HENRY
Special to The Leader
It’s impressive for any high school athlete to take the next step into collegiate athletics. Playing in the NCAA is a dream for most high school students. Whether it’s at the Division I or Division III level, having the opportunity to continue playing one’s sport in college is a privilege that only a small percentage of high school students have and typically takes years of preparation, development and commitment to make it to the next level.
That’s precisely what makes the story of Ian Helps so intriguing.
If you attend a basketball game this season, there’s a good chance that you’ll see Helps logging minutes, crashing the boards and being a standout in his first season here at Fredonia. You’d never guess that this is his first season playing organized basketball.
Yet that’s exactly where he stands at this point. The 6’5” freshman from the Bronx had never really had the chance to play organized and competitive basketball prior to this point.
“In high school we had a team, but we didn’t really have games,” he said. “We would play in maybe two exhibition games a year; that was it.”
With such a limited amount of true experience under his belt, his journey to Division III basketball is nothing short of miraculous. Given his ability as a natural athlete, it was only natural to ask if he had ever thought of pursuing other sports.
“Not really, basketball was always my number one interest,” he said. “I’ve just always been looking for the opportunity to play organized [basketball], and now I have that chance.”
So how exactly did Helps find himself in his current situation? It was seemingly just a stroke of luck.
“Someone actually found a tape of me playing in my church league and sent it into coach [Seymore],” Helps said. “That’s how I got recruited, through my church league back home.
“It’s definitely a lot different,” he said with regard to the change to DIII basketball. “ It’s intense. Coach is really intense. He lives and breathes basketball. He’ll send us late night texts saying how we need to improve, what we need to expect for the next day. He just wants to win.”
Finding unheralded talents like Helps these days is finding a diamond in the rough. Helps has a tenacity and a fierce competitive drive when he takes the court. That was reiterated by both head coach Philip Seymore and point guard Alex Grace.
“He’s a guy who plays bigger than he is,” said Seymore. “He goes up and crashes the boards as well as anyone. He’s definitely a huge asset to this team and has great potential. Right now he’s really raw.”
“He’s a beast,” Grace said in an interview last month. “He gets anything that touches the rim. He listens and just wants to improve and to win.”
Helps plays like he’s 6’9” and brings a crucial element that the team was missing out on a year ago: size.
So how exactly does Helps want to help this team? In his own words, “It’s simple.”
“I’ve just got to show up and learn each day. We’re trying to get better, I’m trying to get better, every day,” he said. “We’re growing as a team, and we all need to buy in to what coach keeps saying in order to get on the same page. I just want to win.”
That winning attitude is something that the team will need moving forward this season. The team is coming off of last year’s forgettable 6-19 season and is off to a 1-2 start in 2014. The team will travel this weekend to play games against Oswego and Cortland in SUNYAC play.