Sophomore Connor Casey shares his experiences with the previous Basketball and Lacrosse seasons, and the ones upcoming this year.
The sweat drips from his finger tips. The buzzer is about to sound, sending the game into overtime, or ending it completely. Connor Casey lines up to take his foul shot and shoots.
Q: So Connor, how does it affect you at home that your dad is also your coach?
Casey: Well the way I look at it, is, he’s my dad at home, and my coach in the gym. So, you know, when I’m in the gym with him working out, I try not to treat him like my dad and more like a coach, but as soon as I get home and it’s all said and done, he’s my dad.
Q: Uh, does he not let you play if your grades are bad? Or if you haven’t been respectful or nice to him at home?
Casey: He wants me to keep my grades up, I’m not sure if he really has a restriction for my, for, uh, what I should receive GPA wise, yeah but he wants me to keep my grades up.
Q: Do you feel like you get special privileges because your dad is the coach? Or special privileges on the court?
Casey: Actually it’s the opposite, I don’t receive these privileges because he is my coach and my dad at the same time.
Q: What are practices like? What do you do for pre season and post season to keep in shape and uh, keep your basketball game and your lacrosse game just on.
Casey: Well during fall there’s open gyms for basketball to keep in shape, you know so you’re not rusty when it comes to the beginning of the season. And lacrosse there’s a couple open fields every week, I try to show up to those, as many as I can, yeah it’s just whatever I can get to really.
Q: What do you like to do in your free time?
Casey: I like playing video games, definitely something I like to do. Longboard every once in a while. Yeah that’s about it.
Q: How do you balance basketball, lacrosse, school, friends and all of your siblings?
Casey: I basically balance my time by getting my homework done right when I get home from school, you know trying to spend some time with the family and you know eat dinner with them. And then after that work on basketball and lacrosse. Pretty much I hang out with friends on the weekends when I have all my sports and schoolwork done.
Q: So is your family important to you? What do you like to do with them when you’re free?
Casey: Well I go to church with them every Sunday, and then after that I usually go out to a brunch with them at First Watch and I try and babysit my little brothers and sisters every time my parents decide to go out or hang out with friends.
Q: So it sounds like you have a pretty good relationship with them. How do you think your team is looking this year?
Casey: We’re young, but I think we’re pretty good. I think we only have three seniors, so it’s going to be tough, but I think we can, I think we’ll be pretty good.
Q: Do you think you’ll play varsity this year?
Casey: I think most likely I’m going to split time JV and varsity, I think that is what my dad had in plan for me.
Q: So you think the loss of all the seniors is going to impact the team dramatically?
Casey: The seniors last year there was a few skilled ones but some didn’t even play, so it might leadership wise, but I think we’ll be okay.
Q: How will you improve your team building, workouts, and practices?
Casey: Well I’m going to try and hang out with my basketball teammates more often, after Friday games get together, eat pizza, yeah know, maybe go to the movies, go bowling, go back to somebody’s house and have a bonfire. (laughter) And practices wise, I think they are going to be a littler bit tougher this year seeing as our team is pretty young, and we have to match up to the teams we play this year. I think more running and more skill-oriented drills will be included this year.
Q: Alright sounds good. Do a lot of your close friends play basketball or lacrosse?
Casey: Yeah, actually, I met most of my friends playing these sports, you know on the weekends we’ll go work out together. Some of the friends I’ve met over my sports seasons are the Powers, Brain Sullivan, and David Smith, just a bunch of people I still hang out with today because I chose to play these sports.
Q: So you guys get pretty serious during the season?
Casey: Uh, yeah we do, we like to, we try to balance our time out, like if we hang out on the weekends we don’t just want to sit inside and play video games, we want to go to the gym or go to the field and keep our skills high.
Q: So do you ever get burnt out on these sports? Lacrosse and basketball?
Casey: Yeah I do, after about two or three games I get a little bit burnt out. It’s important to have a dad and a coach behind me and such encouraging teammates believing in me throughout my sports career.
Q: So Connor you’re pretty serious about these sports now. Do you plan on furthering your sports career in college?
Casey: I’m not quite sure yet, what’s difficult for me is to choice rather I want to play lacrosse or basketball in college.
Q: Is there one that you favor?
Casey: They’re pretty much even. I think what I’m going to do if I decide to play a sport in college is take the better offer of the two.
Q: So scholarship wise or who’s on the team?
Casey: Yeah, pretty much.
Q: Cool. With your dad being the coach, you have to know that some scouts come to the games pretty frequently, even when you’re a sophomore, they’re there to see the seniors. Have you heard of any people going to any important colleges or have you yourself been recruited or scouted?
Casey: I know Brain Sullivan and Wes Richter are being looked at by division 1 schools and MAC schools just small division one schools. I myself am not being looked at still young, and not that great, but you know I’ll try to impress the scouts that come to the games for Brian and Wes, and you never know what’ll happen.