Aidan Igiehon working on making hoop dreams a reality for Irish basketball's next generation
HIGH AND MIGHTY: Dublin Lions’ Aidan Igiehon at the National Basketball Arena. pIC: INPHO/James Crombie
Great gusts of cold air sweep into the massive hall at the Gormanston Sports Complex each time a door is opened but the distinctive smell of stale sweat keeps colonising the place as 140 girls and boys pound the four basketball courts game after game, hour after hour over two days in late December.
Amid the balcony sprinkled with parents, and the 40 volunteers keeping all the various plates spinning, there is one man moving slowly between the courts. His eyes dart and dissect the action as he sips from a plastic coffee cup and pulls his overcoat tighter around his shoulders. He is key to all this. This is for people like him.
Willis Perry is a born and bred New Yorker. Cold winters and basketball are both in his blood but Ireland is new to him. He is here for the first time, just days before Christmas, to run the rule over dozens of teenagers in the hope that one or two might catch his eye and merit an offer of a High School scholarship across the pond.
“Overall, I am happy with the enthusiasm and camaraderie I am seeing out there,” he explains during one break in play in this corner of Co. Meath. “Talent-wise, I have already jotted down some notes on a couple of players that I think can make the transition from European basketball over to the United States.”
This whole enterprise has been bolted tightly together by Ireland international Aidan Igiehon through his eponymous elite academy. By the end of the weekend, Perry will have scribbled down the names of half-a-dozen Irish kids who will have moved one significant step closer to a life-changing basketball move to the United States.
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Gormanston has a long history of sporting innovation. It was here, in the Franciscan College, that the first national GAA coaching course was held 60 years ago and some of hurling and football’s most storied names learned their first Xs and Os. Soccer and basketball have used the grounds as a foundational base too.
Ricky Nixon who, more than anyone, systemised the flow of Gaelic footballers to Aussie Rules, held trials here. Starlit talents including Donegal’s Michael Murphy, Kieran Hughes of Monaghan and Derry’s James Kielt were among those to kick a Sherrin on pitches here for the digestion of AFL suitors.
It feels apposite, then, that Igiehon should have chosen Gormanstown for this particular exercise because this is, in another way, new ground. He himself got plucked from obscurity to play hoops in the States at 13 years of age. The hope is that he can establish a more structured pathway to High School and college basketball scholarships for young Irish players.
This is just the academy’s second year in operation but four teenagers – Terry Okodogbe, Lorcan Bailey Morrow, Ceadan Ash and Dieudonné Kabundi – are already acting as pioneers for Igiehon’s brainchild having taken the plunge with High Schools in the New York/New Jersey area.
“I think this is a first,” says Igiehon of the gathering. “It’s groundbreaking really, a first in history.”
One of those first four kids, Okodogbe, has landed at Lawrence Woodmere Academy. The principal at Woodmere? None other than Perry who is school principal, founder and CEO of Quality Athletes Inc. and the High School executive director for a Rising Stars programme that offers scholarships for talented kids in the state and wider area.
Perry’s link with Igiehon goes back to the latter’s arrival Stateside as a raw but talented kid from Dublin. The American was one of his coaches at the start of the young Irishman’s long stint in a country where Igiehon would become one of the top-ranked High School ballers and a Division I NCAA college player with mighty Louisville.
“We have a family bond there,” Perry explains.
Igiehon spent 10 years in the US. Still only 24, he is home for now playing for his old Dublin Lions club and pouring more of himself into the academy and this bid to establish ties across the Atlantic for the next generation. He is bringing his personal experience, a bulging contacts book and an entrepreneur’s eye to it.
But what is it a scout looks for in a player?
“It’s just about passing the eye test. How is he size-wise for his position? Then you look for the intangibles. Does he play hard? Does he dive on the floor? Is he a good teammate? People think it’s just ‘me, me, me’, I gotta get my buckets, I gotta score’. But it’s, ‘is he coachable? Once you pass the eye test everything they look for is the intangibles.”
Perry prioritises the word ‘commitment’ and follows it up with ‘toughness’. Not just on the court. Off it too. The transition and immersion are total. Teenagers are asked to uproot from one continent to another, to rebuild lives. That’s tough on them, and it’s tough on their parents. Igiehon is on the phone to his four pioneers every week. There can be tears.
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US basketball has opened its eyes to international talent as the decades have slipped by. There are any number of metrics to measure that but just consider the MVP award handed out for the best player across the regular NBA season and how North Americans won it all but twice between 1956 and 2018.
Since then Serbian and Denver Nuggets centre Nikola Jokic has won it three times, the Milwaukee Bucks’ Greek power forward Giannis Antetokounmpo twice, and Cameroon centre Joel Embid took it two seasons ago for performances with the Philadelphia 76ers. Is it any wonder that scouts are now looking at younger foreign talent?
Perry is straight up about how tough it is to make it just to a High School court.
“So, that’s a long conversation. I’ll shorten that by putting it on a scale of one to 10. Ten being the hardest, it is probably a nine. There are a lot of factors. First of all, we look for young kids with character. Young people that are doing the right things overall, in the classroom.
“We look for kids who want to work hard, give great effort and just get out there. Then we talk about the ability: the skillset, the dribbling and then the natural attributes. Being 6’ 8”, 6’ 9” doesn’t hurt. Those kind of things all play a part and that brings me out here hoping to open up doors for those athletes that have those qualities.”
Igiehon describes those that make it as the one-percenters. If that’s akin to making it from here to the moon then the NBA is another galaxy entirely. Only one Irishman has played in the big league. Pat Burke managed three seasons with the Orlando Magic and Phoenix Suns and he was four when his family left Ireland for Cleveland.
Injuries played a large part in preventing Igiehon from emulating him but if a pro career in the States is the longest of shots then there remains an element of win-win to all this. Full scholarships are worth in the region of $65,000-$70,000 per year and a lifetime of new experiences are thrown in the bargain.
The plan now for the half-dozen players in Perry’s notebook is to go to America's East Coast this coming summer with maybe 35 or 45 other kids on an Igiehon Elite Academy trip. They will share courts with some of the local kids, and the opportunity to catch the eye of a wider network of scouts.
The inaugural academy trip to the US only happened last summer but things are moving fast. Two such operations are planned for 2025 with maybe 70 or 80 players in total travelling. Another 25 or 30 will make for London and a tournament organised by the players agency BMT Basketball that will draw in teams from Europe and the States.
Igiehon has built something big and new in a very short period of time and there are no plans to slow down. The academy, which caters for boys and girls, is already up and running through the season in Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Kerry. He sees room for more growth again here at home and further afield.
“The NBA has built a bridge to the European game but no-one is doing it at youth level. Not on a mass scale like this. We will absolutely try to branch out to other locations abroad and the same in Ireland as well. We probably need to get something going out west, in Galway, because there is talent out there too, and maybe add a couple more places in Munster.”
Only the very few will make it to the US, but the dream feels more real now. For all of them.
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