Sometimes you might see a couple of guys move forward from a high school basketball squad to a community college team. But three? And when you add another player from a rival school five miles away?
Well, sometimes it seems like the Chemeketa Community College men’s basketball squad looks a lot like a Stayton-Cascade all-star team.
Playing for the Storm this season are Dominic Ball, Kellen Sande and Ty Best of Cascade and Jace Aguilar of Stayton. Ball is the lone sophomore in the bunch, with Sande red-shirting a year ago and thus in his first year on the squad.
The numbers show that the locals definitely have made their presence felt. Sande, a 6-foot guard, leads the team in scoring at 12.3 points per game, and also leads in assists and steals. Ball, a 6-11 center, averages 7.4 points, a team-high 5.9 rebounds and a team-high 1.9 blocked shots. Best, a 6-7 forward, averages 9.4 points and 5 boards. The 6-foot Aguilar is scoring 5.3 points per game. Sande has started 24 of the 25 games, with Ball at 22, Best at 7 and Aguilar with four starts.
The Storm, who are 11-14 overall and 5-10 in the South Region of the North West Athletic Conference, average 73.8 points per game. The Stayton-Cascade contingent accounts for 34.4 of those. The squad concluded its 2023-24 season Feb. 28 against Umpqua, after the Our Town press time.
Ball, Sande and Best all played on the 2022 Class 4A state champions at Cascade. Sande and Best were named to the all-tournament team. Best had a year left, but a knee injury reduced him to a spectator as the Cougars repeated as state champions in 2023.
So what is the difference between high school and college hoops?
“You have to buy in,” said Aguilar. “The season is two or three times as long and everyone’s good and everyone can beat everyone.”
“You have to be focused and organized,” said Best, who noted that the knee injury has healed and he feels like his old self again.
“You can’t take the night off,” Sande said.
Ball and Sande made the first leap to Chemeketa, with Best noting it became “a great option” for him with his ex-teammates already there.
Aguilar had an interesting take on recruiting, noting that being able to play with the Cascade athletes was an incentive because he knew they would work hard and help make him better.
Ball’s eligibility ends this spring and he says he definitely wants to continue playing. He’s in general education at Chemeketa with hopes of working in computers. Southern Oregon has expressed interest in him.
Sande, Aguilar and Best all are freshmen, eligibility-wise, and all three have more time than Ball to think about their futures. Sande knows he wants to work in law enforcement and is getting his criminal justice course work out of the way at Chemeketa. Aguilar wants to major in exercise science, perhaps at Oregon State University, with the goal of becoming a personal trainer.
Before his knee injury Best was getting looked at by Eastern Washington and Portland State. He said he wants to study accounting and finance and hopes to find a four-year school that will give him the best combination of basketball opportunity and the chance to meet his educational goals.
