In a season unlike any other, it was perhaps harder than ever to differentiate between the best players throughout the Big 30 area.
Due to COVID-related delays and restrictions, teams played shortened schedules, some longer than others, and stuck mostly to their region: no interstate play, for instance, between New York and Pennsylvania.
But comparing the resumes of two senior guards, Olean’s Jason Brooks and Coudersport’s Hayden Keck, there were several remarkable similarities.
Keck was the MVP of the Pennsy “bubble” in the North Central league, a group of 15 schools in neighboring counties. He averaged 21.5 points, 6.7 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 2.7 steals for the Falcons (14-6), who made the District 9 Class AA Championship, a 67-65 loss to top-seeded Karns City.
Brooks, meanwhile, was Player of the Year in the ultra-competitive CCAA West I. He averaged 21.8 points, 4.0 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 2.6 steals for the Huskies (12-5), who reached the Section 6 Class B1 Championship, losing 87-71 to Bennett.
And both players come from schools that have dominated the Big 30 basketball awards conversation in recent years. Olean and Coudersport players have won six Big 30 Player of the Year awards since 2014: Olean’s Will Bathurst (2014), Ben Eckstrom and Elijah Ramadhan (2016, co-POYs) and Covi James (2020) and Coudy’s Jared Green (2018) and Owen Chambers (2019).
Add two more names to the list in 2021: Brooks and Keck were named Big 30 Co-Players of the Year by the Times Herald’s all-star committee.
BROOKS SAID he’s looked up to the great players in Olean’s boys basketball program for years and learned from several once he became close to the varsity team.
“I remember watching Wil (Bathurst) and all them and watching Jake Cavana and obviously Mike Schmidt,” he said. “I learned a lot from Mike, especially; he taught me a lot just from how the game is, how fast it was compared to JV, he was on varsity when I was on JV.
“I definitely watched a lot of them growing up. I definitely wanted to be like them when Wil and them were in the state finals.”
Brooks’ scoring numbers took a leap from his 14.9 points per game as a junior, when he made the Big 30 Second Team. He knew the Huskies would look to him to be a go-to scorer after losing three seniors, including James, from a sectional champion team in 2019-20.
Second-year Olean coach Tim Kolasinksi said he never had to discuss it with Brooks: both knew the senior would need to step up to keep this team competitive in West I and at sectionals.
“I think I knew that and he knew that but I don’t think we ever actually sat down and talked about it,” Kolasinski said. “But we just knew that as great of a player as he was last year that he had kind of accepted the fact that he was going to be — not that he didn’t score last year — he was going to distribute the ball a little bit more to some of the scorers. This year he was able to do both. I think it was just evident for both of us that he was going to have to elevate his game and he sure did.”
KOLASINSKI has coached Brooks for five years, dating back to his eighth grade season on junior varsity, and still can’t believe his point guard is about to graduate.
“I think part of me just doesn’t believe that he won’t be here next year as funny as that sounds,” Kolasinski said. “But Jay is a special player and he is, first and foremost, a kid who loves the game … and having coached him for so long, I’ve known him even longer, he was coming to open gym-type workouts as a seventh-grader and probably would have come before that if he was able to. I think that’s one of the things that has made him so special is that he does love it so much.
“He is the type of kid who after practice there comes a time where I have to say, ‘Hey I’ve got to go. We’ve got to shut this down,’ and kind of kick him out, because he will stay and he’ll shoot or he’ll play somebody one-on-one or he’ll do whatever else. I think you obviously see the success that he’s had, and it’s indicative of his love of the game and his work habits.”
Brooks admitted he still wishes the Huskies could have finished off the sectional championship against Bennett. But he was mostly happy with how the season went, and thrilled to be able to play at all, even without some of his favorite aspects like the big crowds and trips to Buffalo State College for sectionals.
“I was just glad that we got a season because I think I heard a couple days before they said we had a season that there was like a 10% chance of playing,” he said. “So when I heard we were playing, I was just like I didn’t care if we had a crowd or anything like that. I just wanted to play one more season.”
KECK, MEANWHILE, said he tried to pick up different aspects of the game from playing with the all-stars before him, such as Green and Chambers.
“My freshman year was when Jared was a senior,” he said, “so I kind of just was the young guy and my job wasn’t to be the main leader yet, so I learned just how to go out there, work hard and do all the things so when I got to that point my junior and senior year I’d be ready. Owen, I played with him for two years, he was a great player, one of the best players I’ve ever played with; he could shoot the ball like crazy and he showed me he was always calm in big moments and never showed that the moment was too big. When I got to that point … whenever there was a moment I’d always try to stay calm and put everything I learned into that moment.”
Keck plans to play football at Mercyhurst in the fall.
“We were all just happy to get a chance to play because of COVID and everything,” he said of his senior season. “But even though we were playing in the bubble and it wasn’t a normal year, we still got the games in, we had a chance to compete for a District 9 title and we came up short in (it). It was still fun and we were glad we got a chance to play with each other.”
EASTON HAS seen Keck up-close since the senior was playing travel ball in fourth grade with Easton’s son, Derek. Easton was an assistant under coach Brian Furman before taking over in 2019-20. He thinks former Coudy stars from Darren Keglovits to Green and Chambers set an example for someone like Keck to follow as a leader when his time came.
“Hayden as a younger athlete playing with the older kids would benefit by getting better playing against better competition,” Easton said. “But also … the example set by those peers that graduated before him helped him understand the expectation, or understand what it takes to be the guy, the player that he was, that he wanted to be.”
Easton described Keck as an athletic guard with a football player’s toughness, making him integral to the Falcons’ offense and defense this year.
“What made him really special for me was the ability to adapt, with his athleticism and his quickness, to be able to take advantage of that and use it with his skillset to be able to manipulate a game,” Easton said. “Or to be able to at times take over a game offensively, but defensively, quickness, we utilized him on top of our 1-3-1 for several years, on top of our 3-2 defense where he would get his hands in the passing lane and he would be able to take the ball. He just had a different gear, when he was able to get a steal and break into transition, he was one of the few kids that we’ve had that could sprint as fast with the ball dribbling as he could without a ball, which really made it impossible for teams to defend him.
“Toughness and grit, he had that with him. His toughness that he got through football carried over into basketball. And he was one of the team leaders as far as being able to make teammates better around him.”
