'Scholarship material for the States': Mayo star Kobe McDonald's basketball education
Liam McHale on Kobe McDonald: “If he wasn’t playing football or heading to Australia, he’d be scholarship material for the States." Pic: ©INPHO/Tom O’Hanlon
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised, given his first name.
But for an idea of how grounded Kobe McDonald has remained while soaring so high, we need only explore what he was up to, and up for, three mornings a week this past winter during what will always be the most manic season of his whole life.
Classes in Jesus and Mary Gortnor Abbey secondary school in Crossmolina don’t begin until 8.54am. Unless you take Liam McHale’s that is. If you enroll for basketball tutorials from arguably the best Irish player that sport has known, you’re in the school hall for 7.30am.
First person there was Kobe, just like his namesake was renowned for, shooting jumpers. Even though he was in his Leaving Cert year. Even when Crossmolina were on their run to the county senior semi-final, even when St Kilda’s signed him, even when he began training with the Mayo seniors.
Read More
“I’ve never seen a young fella so busy,” says McHale, “yet he still wanted to keep playing with his boys. They grew up together, playing it and loving it and all the jiving they’d be having at it. He was just one of them, so he just wanted to stay part of it. I would say he loves basketball as much as he loves football.”
McHale’s involvement with Gortnor Abbey began over a decade ago. Around the time he was going about winning an All-Ireland minor title, Conor Loftus was playing his club basketball in Ballina, mixing and holding his own with veterans and legends like McHale and Ronan McGarrity.
“Conor was a very good basketball player,” says McHale, “probably the best to come out of Gortnor Abbey since Kobe and [fellow Mayo U20] Dylan Flynn arrived. At 6’ 2” he was big for a guard, athletic. He was clever, knew when to pick his moments. He could be happy to just bring the ball up and pass it around and then just before the half go for eight points in a row to put us four up. Or do little enough in a small game but then go for 28 [points] and 12 [rebounds] in a big one.”
While scrimmaging with McHale one summer, Loftus and a couple of his friends asked if he would coach their school team. “I told them, ‘Talk to your principal and if they want me to come in, I’ll come in.’ So it’s Conor’s fault that I started in there!”
Over the years the programme developed a rhythm. The senior and junior teams trained and played before Christmas to free them up for their exams; then in the new year the focus would turn to first and second years.
A few years ago they moved training to mornings. “We were always clashing with the football in the evenings,” says McHale. “Some parents initially weren’t happy about the early mornings but the kids loved it, getting up some shots before school, then having the evenings free.”
It particularly suited Kobe this season. With all his commitments in the evenings, he had to reluctantly discontinue playing with the local club, the magnificently- and aptly-named Crossmolina Lakers whom three years ago he remarkably led to a top-10 finish at the U16 All-Ireland club championships, averaging 23 points a game.
Like his half-brother Jordan Flynn, he was named after an NBA icon. Their mother Karen was a fine basketball player. Kobe’s father Ciaran then was a fan and friend of the Ballina team of the 1990s that won a Superleague and two National Cups, regularly going for a drink with them after games and occasionally even falling in with them at scrimmages.
Ciaran particularly hit it off with Deora Marsh, the genial easy-going 6' 9” American who played Division One college ball in his mother’s native Mississippi before coming to Ireland and jumping out of every gym he routinely packed. The pair remain firm friends; over the past month in Croke Park sitting beside McDonald has been a fellow Mayo sports icon, the one they used to drum bodhráns over and chant his name – ‘Dee-Yor-Aah! Dee-Yor-Aah!’
Forty years on from when Marsh first came to town, the sport still has the capacity to make Mayo seem like Indiana. “When Gortnor Abbey and St Muredach’s play each other,” says McHale, “you could have 400 people wedged into a hall at 12 o’clock on a Wednesday in December.”
In fifth year Kobe went for 25 points in that fixture to seal the narrowest and sweetest of wins. And so in sixth year he wanted more of it. Even if it meant tormenting McHale.
“The Wednesday before Crossmolina played Westport in the county semi-final, we had a school’s basketball game in Castlebar. I didn’t play him in the first quarter. I could feel him giving me the daggers. I didn’t play him in the second either; we were about six points up and felt we’d be comfortable enough without him. At half-time he came up to me. ‘Look, just let me play.’ I said, ‘Kobe, I’ll be killed if something happens to you.’ He said, ‘Don’t mind that. Please. Put me in.’ So he played most of the second half before I took him off near the end.
“He’s an awfully nice, quiet lad but he’s driven. Nobody makes it to the top unless they have that bit of a Roy Keane or Michael Jordan edge to them. Sometimes you have to cool him down a bit. He might be trying too hard or get into early foul trouble and you’ve to take him out and go, ‘You’ve got to breathe, man. Calm down. We’ll put you back in soon.’
“But usually I love to see that temper coming out in him. We might be scrimmaging up to seven, his team might be 5-2 down or I’d let a foul on him go without a call to rise him. And you’d see him muttering under his breath, and then just take off.
“If he wasn’t playing football or heading to Australia, he’d be scholarship material for the States. In transition year he was awesome. One game against Summerhill [College, Sligo] he dunked three times, once in the open court, the other two just jumping on top of young fellas going down the middle of the lane.
“But I could see his explosiveness drop a bit from all the heavy endurance work he was putting in, ramping up for senior football. He’d be a bit like his dad and not crazy about the weights, but as we said to him when he signed with St Kilda’s, that’d have to change!”
John Maughan, as part of the Crossmolina management, has monitored some of Kobe’s transition to senior football – and how Kobe has transformed the club’s senior team. He was on the line, his mouth left gaping, as McDonald while still only 17 went for 10 points in last October’s county semi-final against Westport.
“The last person I saw someone doing something like that was Padraig Brogan go for 0-13 in the [1983] county final for Knockmore,” says Maughan. “His range of skills was just incredible.
“So is his game intelligence and maturity. Look what he did against Monaghan in Clones when he went out to midfield to win that late kickout. I doubt that was an instruction from the sideline. He identifies the issue and goes and addresses it. And you need that in particular in an All-Ireland final where communication is a challenge.”
Maughan, like McHale, has known McDonald most of his life. Observed how his grandfather Danny, a former club chairperson, and Peggy beside him over the years attended most his games, just like Ciaran. Seen him as a kid tag along with his father when Ciaran was overseeing the county U14 development sessions that McHale would occasionally give a hand out with. In the most beautiful and natural way he’s been immersed in sport, a ball always knocking around the place, and encouraged to try out all the possibilities it and he himself has.
“He’s just an exceptionally well-reared, respectful, pleasant young fella,” says Maughan. “A few months ago our manager Brian Benson was dropping his own daughter off to Gortnor Abbey when he saw Kobe walking in. The previous night he’d been up in Meath, playing a challenge game for Mayo, probably wouldn’t have got back until two in the morning. And yet there he was, schoolbag over his shoulder, no airs or graces, totally grounded. Just an ordinary schoolkid who just happens to be doing some extraordinary things.”
How extraordinary? When the Gortnor Abbey U19 boys basketball team’s last dance finished last winter with a loss to a Galway school, McHale and assistant Fiona Page, a teacher in the school, had a special word in the dressing room for the sixth-years, including McDonald.
First they wished him the best with Mayo and his AFL adventure. Then McHale added, “And Kobe, remember, you could win the All-Ireland this year and then be heading to Australia the week after.”
McHale could sense an air of incredulity in the room, so he said it again. “Kobe, you could win an All-Ireland this coming year with Mayo and then go to Australia. Remember I said that.”
Because McHale knew. Kobe’s got game. And in more than just one.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
