'Keep my head and focus, don't get homesick': Irish ballers aiming High on America's hardwood

Irish Examiner

a day ago

Terry Okodogbe had already covered thousands of miles by the time his flight touched down at JFK Airport last summer. His new home and a new school - a whole new life - were now just a quick spin down the road in Woodmere, Nassau County, but this journey was only beginning.
Like generations of Irish people before him, this first experience of America felt very familiar and completely different. Bordering on the surreal. The sheer size of the cars and the freeways, and the simple sight of these behemoths driving on the 'other' side of the road, struck him straight away.
It wouldn't be the last time his mind had to scramble and adapt.
Only 16 when he left Navan, Okodogbe's prowess and promise as a basketball player had been spotted by Aidan Igiehon, the Irish international who runs his eponymous academy here at home, and through which an expanding pathway to High School athletic scholarships for Irish kids in the US has been established.
Now it was all on this teenager far, far away from home. And he knew it.
'Yeah, I'm by myself,' Okodogbe looks back now, having returned home for the summer. 'Like, I'm thinking, anything can happen. I've just got to really keep my head and focus. Don't get homesick. Stay focused. I know what I'm there for. I'm there for basketball. I'm not there for anything else. Yeah, play ball.' That wasn't completely true.
Life at the Lawrence Woodmere Academy offered more than hard courts and this man out of Meath was of a mind to take part. He played piano, did some acting and emceed a cultural night where he spoke about Irish culture and listened to stories from others with backgrounds stretching from Jamaica to Chad and Vietnam.
But basketball was the orb on which everything turned.
Okodogbe was no stranger to the competing and concurrent demands of academia and sport at home. This was another level again. The standard was breathtaking, he found the coaches strict, and it took time to get accustomed to the running drills. So many running drills.
A lack of game time took a toll. Though training every day, he felt his skills blunted without the sharp edge of competitive action. A drop in confidence followed. He wasn't the first, and he won't be the last, player to take time to adapt to a higher plane, but a corner was turned when the park tournament season kicked in.
A national institution run by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), Okodogbe describes it exactly like you might imagine from the movies. Played outdoors, often in the broiling heat of summer, this was another of those seminal moments where he had to remind himself that this wasn't some version of Hollywood. That this was his life.
'When the AAU season came, when the summer came and the chance came to use those skills, that really built on my confidence playing against random people. It's a new way of playing, everything is faster and you have to get caught up. And now, with the upcoming season, I feel like I'm ready.'
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Portledge High School, 25 miles northeast of Woodmere, wasn't Caedan Ash's first rodeo. Just turned 18 when he landed in Long Island last year. Ash had already spent TY (transition year in Ireland) at the CBA Basketball Academy in Badajoz, Spain where he had trained three times a day.
But New York was another world.
'I still was homesick, even though I had lived away before. Spain's only a two-hour flight. America's a lot different. So yeah, it was still hard to me. Last year I completed the 11th grade and I'm into senior year next year. Then I'll do a prep year and hopefully get a college scholarship. So, that's my plan.'
Like Okodogbe, basketball is the focus, but it can't be the only one. Ash struggled at first to get the Grade Point Average (GPA) needed to earn the scholarship. And it took time to get his head around the work needed in class once he arrived. Grades of 70-plus are expected. Demanded.
Training started at 6am with running, ball handling and some gym work before finishing two hours later. That was the first session. More gym and scrimmages followed after lunch. Then the morning session was repeated that evening. Day after day. Ash, whose height has stretched to 7ft, put on 5kgs in the year since leaving Blessington.
Not easy with that height and that workload. Breakfast is eight - 8 - pieces of Weetabix and the first of three protein shakes with a banana, peanut butter and two scoops of protein creatine chucked in. Lunch involves a similar load, with maybe a pizza thrown on top. All this before his 'main' meal of the day.
'I just keep forcing myself to eat. It's hard.'
Both players found it easy enough to make connections in their new surroundings. And listening to Ash talk about his 15-minute train rides into New York City at the weekend to do some shopping or grab a bite speaks for another of the upsides of these lives less ordinary. But that processed American food?
'I really missed my mom's home cooking,' says Okodogbe. 'It's been so long. Honestly, I'm tired of pizza. I'm so tired of the American fast foods. I really miss family times, any time my brother, my sisters, my mom and dad are eating the home cooked food. Even getting a takeaway at home with the spice bag… I haven't had a spice bag in so long.'
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Ireland has been sending players to America on college scholarships for a long time. Igiehon was one of them, but he was unusual in starting his Stateside residence at High School level having been spotted as a raw talent in Dublin. His discovery owed plenty to chance, too much, and he knew it. He's looking to reduce the odds now for others.
Okodogbe and Ash were two of the four players sent over last year. Another 12 have since been confirmed for the next academic year. That growth in numbers is reflected in the spread of schools involved with Irish players now signed up for stints as far afield as Florida and Kentucky as well as the east coast.
That's a 300% increase in one year and, says Igiehon, just the tip of the iceberg.
Ella Broderick, the first Irish female player to be sent over via the Igiehon Academy route, will study and play at the SPIRE Academy in Ohio. A staggering combination of boarding school and world-class multi-sport centre of excellence constructed across 800 acres, it has to be seen to be believed.
Full scholarships are worth up to €70,000 a year but things can change. Ash has transferred to St Mary's Prep in Providence this year. Okodogbe has switched to St Mary's Manhasset now that the Lawrence Woodmere Academy has shut its doors for 12 months while it re-examines its financial model.
Strip out all the big picture stuff – making the move, settling in, the stakes involved – and the cultural adaptation this all requires is no less searching on the court itself where the game is more individualistic than the team-orientated ball played in Ireland and, in Ash's case, in Spain.
American ball is faster, too. Okodogbe boils it down pretty simply: 'You gotta score. That's just the only thing'. His shooting is good, his athleticism is off the charts. It is his dribbling that he feels needs work if ambitions of a Division I college scholarship and pro ball somewhere abroad beyond that are to be realised.
No small task.
'It's incredibly hard. Like, D1 you're talking about an incredible level. Even to play overseas, incredible level. It's not easy. It's not easy at all. When I first came to America, I went to a game the same day I landed and I saw the competition. I was like, 'wow, this is not gonna be easy'.
'The skill gap is, honestly, absurd. It's crazy. The skill gap between the Irish players and Americans is crazy, but I can see the skill gap now. I know what I need to do. I know exactly what I need to do to get a scholarship offering because once you get one it starts flowing in. That's how it works. You just gotta get one, and then it's there.'
Ash has set his sights on a similar path, but with the Shangri-La that is the NBA itself as the end goal. No Irish player has played in the Big League other than the Tullamore-born and Ohio-raised Pat Burke who had a few years with Orlando and Phoenix in the noughties in between stop-offs in Greece and Spain.
No-one has come closer since than CJ Fulton, the former Belfast Star guard who switched to Winchendon School in Boston, played college with Lafayette and Charleston, and then made it as far as the NBA summer leagues this year with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Another step for the Irish in America. Another reason for the next generation to aim higher.
'It really gives you the perspective that, 'oh, maybe Irish players really do have a chance',' Okodogbe says. 'Even playing in college, playing the academy he made as well, these are all like, 'wow, maybe I should do everything, maybe I should join, maybe I should try basketball and I could get a scholarship and play college'. You know?'