BAC Magazine Ball Bro Issue!

COACHING CORNER
DSST HOOPS
By: Gary Brewer PHOTOS BY 3DBYMIKE
WONDAME DAVIS
GOING DANCING?
Coach Wondame Davis of the
DSST-Stapleton Knights Boys
basketball team has watched
the evolution of one of the
nation’s top performing Science
and Technology charter
schools first hand. 13 years ago marks the
start of this chain of schools that began with
just one location, but now includes multiple
campuses across the Denver metro area.
A STEM focused school that was created
with the expressed intent of preparing
kids for college achieves these goals while
instilling certain Core Values (Honesty,
Integrity, Curiosity, Respect, Responsibility,
Doing Your Best) that are guideposts
for all achievement throughout the entire
DSST community. Any success in sports is
an added bonus but not an expectation of
any kind. The decision just to take part in
organized sports was a ‘come what may’ reality
at DSST.
What came was the dreaded years of
losing that are normal to any new school,
mostly because it takes a few years just to
grow up your first senior class. By the time
DSST had its first class of seniors, it had
also lost the boys varsity basketball coach
to a tour of military duty. Coach Wondame
Davis took over, and has been the head
coach ever since.
“I had always been messing around with
coaching my own kids in little league, because
they were so young before I started
coaching baseball at DSST. I did a few stints
of coaching ….like at Manual being that it is
my former school” said Davis.
It was 1997, Davis graduated from Manual
where he played football and also played
basketball for a successful program run by
his father and uncle who are also coaches.
His athletic skills landed him a football
scholarship at the University of Washington.
When college ended and Davis started
a family of his own, coaching was a natural
transition. “I actually got hired at DSST
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BAC Magazine
as a weight training
coach, and then
weeks later, I was
offered the baseball
job”, recalls Davis.
“I started coaching,
and the basketball
coach- who was
in the military at the
time- he had to go
over-seas, so I was
offered the basketball
job right when
we (DSST Stapleton)
were becoming
a member school of
CHSAA, in 2007.
The 2008 season
(the next season) is the first season that
we finally had our first graduating class at
DSST.” Davis said.
Soon after graduating its first senior
class, it became abundantly clear that the
rigors of the DSST curriculum called for a
middle school that would better prepare
the students for the rigor of high school intended
for college prep. What came along
with that dynamic was the added benefit of
grooming future student athletes sooner,
while allowing them to develop chemistry
starting in middle school. This year’s class
of seniors are among those players who’ve
started together in middle school, an element
paying dividends for the chemistry of
the Knights basketball team.
“It’s been a really amazing journey over
the past four years. Just being able to play
under coach Davis has been really awesome.
He’s a really good coach”, said senior
Jordan Heien. “I feel like we have a really
good chance of going far this year. We just
need to stay together as a team and push
through the adversity and we can go far”
When the Knights talk about going far,
that’s in comparison to the 8th place finish
for last season’s team. In some ways
the result was a disappointment, but it also
proved to be new waters for the players and
coaching staff who now approach the playoffs
with the experience of recent years.
Heien elaborated on the value of his
teams deep playoff run last year as the team
seeks to make it just a few more games
beyond last season. “(I learned from last
year about) being able to stay calm during
the most pressuring moments. Last year
we missed four or five free throws (down
the stretch). One more (freethrow) and we
would have made it to the final four. So it’s
all about just getting past the really tough
times”.
At 6’ 7” and growing, Heien is averaging
nearly 15 points per game, and has a few
colleges interested in him, but will expand
his list of options if his team is able to finish
as champions this year.
As a school, the Knights have come close
in recent years, with two third place finishes
from the girls team under the guidance of
coach CeCe Brame. The growing success has
been a culmination of what the girls started,
a tradition of proving that college ready basketball
players come from nerd schools too.
College worthy players such as senior
forward, Blake Pullen, a Knight whose journey
to the high school also came via the ad-