Amidst the varsity basketball team’s frustrating season, Samson Donick has proven himself to be one of the league’s star players.
Despite a record of a 10-11 (2-7 MCAL), Donick is in the top ten for scoring in MCAL play and is averaging 15.5 points per game. However, Donick’s teammates consider his importance to go far beyond just his scoring ability.
“He’s a good leader on the floor because he points out how people can play better, and he would sacrifice whatever he has to for the benefit on the team,” Jacks said.
Part of this sacrifice means giving up his own shot to get a teammate a better one. Junior Peter Kennedy said Donick is an excellent passer. Donick averages 2.8 assists per game and is tied for the team lead in assists per game.
“He has really good court vision,” Kennedy said, “probably better than everyone else’s on the team.”
Jacks echoed Kennedy in saying that Samson competes at a different level than most high school basketball players.
“Samson plays at a higher level than most of the kids on the team,” Jacks said. “He plays with more intensity and he’s really quick.”
While teammates implied that Donick is the ideal team player, he also has the ability to take control of the game offensively. The fact that one player can have a huge impact on the outcome of a game is something that Donick said he loves about basketball.
“I love that there’s five kids on a court so it’s still a team game, but you still have a lot of influence as an individual,” Donick said.
After averaging 6.9 points last year and 2.7 points his sophomore year, Donick has improved immensely in his third year on the varsity team. He attributes his improvement to increased maturity and composure.
Donick hopes to play for an Ivy League college, although he has not made any specific plans yet. He also said that a possible option would be to play at a highly ranked Division III school.
Although this year the basketball team has had a rough start, Donick said his team is not discouraged by their recent losses to Branson and Terra Linda.
“We started off poorly, but we started off poorly last year in the same way, and we ended up 8-6 in the league,” Donick said. “We just had a couple of rough games, but we are by no means discouraged about our start of the season this year.”
