Jon Brockman got up early Thursday morning so he could give his brother a hug.
Older brother Paul was headed for freshman orientation at Seattle Pacific University.
“It’s weird,” Jon said. “We’ve never not had him in the house.”
Later in the day, after classes let out at Snohomish High School where he is beginning his senior year, Jon went out to a place called The Farm where he has spent many a day since he was a youngster.
There he does odd jobs, picking sweet corn or harvesting pumpkins and loading them in trucks.
“It’s fun,” he said. “I like working with my hands.”
So goes the life of one of the most sought-after high school basketball players in the United States. Showing brotherly love. Getting his hands dirty working in a field after spending a day in classes.
For Jon, the farm work must almost seem like a relief after what he has been through as a highly-recruited player.
There have been hundreds of phone calls and letters from college coaches, not to mention the media requests for interviews. It’s enough to sour a young man on the entire recruiting process. Yet, Jon Brockman seems to have held up well.
“He’s handled it a lot better than I would have,” said his high school coach, Len Bone. “I would say 50 colleges last year would want me to have him in the office when they called or have me have him call them. He hasn’t got caught up in it.”
Literally about every major Division I team wanted him to come play for them, including UCLA, North Carolina, Duke, Connecticut, Gonzaga, Georgetown, Arizona, Louisville and Kansas.
As we sat talking in the coaches’ office at the high school Thursday afternoon, coach Bone asked Jon to show me a couple of letters sent by recruiters.
He opened two from USC. Some letters. On one was scrawled, “Jon, play for a winner.” On another, “Jon, your game is on point.”
He wasn’t quite sure what to make of the second one.
Maybe they want you to play point guard.
He smiled, shrugged.
Guard is one position he won’t play.
No, he’ll make someone a wonderful power forward. Or, if he grows about three inches, an active, athletic, go-for-every-rebound center.
Who’ll be the lucky coach to sign him? It’s come down to two. Either Lorenzo Romar at the University of Washington or Mike Krzyzewski at Duke.
Three years ago, when Jon was a freshman, the UW would have been the last place you’d have guessed would make his final list. The Husky program was in bad shape and it would cost coach Bob Bender his job.
Then the Huskies went out and hired Romar, a former UW player, and in his second year he got them into the NCAA tournament with a 19-win season. Suddenly, they’re a player in the recruiting game for one of the best big men in the country. And the best offensive rebounder in high school.
That’s what his summertime coach for the last five years says. “There’s nobody close,” said Jim Marsh, the leader of an elite team of players called the Friends of Hoop that travels all over the country. He named off several big-time prep players and said, “None of them do what Jon does.” And Marsh, a former SuperSonics assistant, knows his basketball.
Whoever gets Jon Brockman will also get a kid with a level head and a strong work ethic. Above all, they’ll get a genuinely nice young man.
“Just about as nice a kid as I’ve ever met,” Marsh said by cell-phone from the East Coast, where he was about to go dangle his feet in the Atlantic Ocean. “He’s about as good as they get. Period.”
A downhome, hometown boy. Marsh recalls walking into the Twin Eagles Cafe in downtown Snohomish to have breakfast with Jon. “Pineapple juice?” asked the waitress the minute she saw Jon enter the place. “With biscuits and gravy?”
It was right out of the fifties, Marsh said, relishing the scene.
Coaches relish his work habits.
Twenty minutes into a practice, I’ve seen him with his shirt drenched in sweat. When your best player works that hard, it catches on with everyone else.
No wonder a coach like Roy Williams of North Carolina called him from the Summer Olympics in Athens. No wonder UCLA arranged for him to have breakfast with the Wizard of Westwood, John Wooden, during his recruiting visit in May. No wonder Krzyzewski had dinner at the Brockman home two weeks ago yesterday. (Jon sat there thinking, “Wow, is this really happening?”). No wonder Jon was on the Duke campus recently playing hoops with the Blue Devil varsity on his official visit. No wonder USC bombarded him with as many as 20 letters a day, if you can call a cryptic six words on a sheet of paper a letter.
After a summer of basketball in such places as New Orleans, Augusta, Ga., Indianapolis, Colorado Springs, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and a sojourn overseas to a small town in France, Jon came home and went on a camping trip with his father, Gordy, and some friends over in the Olympics.
It was there on a boulder in the mountains one warm, sunny day that father and son sat down to pare the list of potential schools from six to three. North Carolina, Arizona and Gonzaga were eliminated. The UW, Duke and UCLA survived.
Difficult decisions, all, Jon said, because they were all excellent programs with outstanding coaches.
Why not Gonzaga? is an obvious question. “It was just … the shoe didn’t fit,” he said.
He said that about a couple of other schools. Not the right fit.
He needn’t say anything else. A player knows. Call it a gut instinct.
That also is probably, he admitted, what his final decision will come down to. His gut will tell him.
It may hit him in the middle of dinner. Or in the middle of the night. Or when he’s out in the backyard playing basketball, as he sometimes did when the phone calls wouldn’t stop coming.
When will he make his final decision?
Well, he’ll make his official visit to the UW on Oct. 8, so it could come in November during the early signing period.
He doesn’t give either school the edge right now, saying it’s 50-50. One program on the rise, one program solidly established.
“That’s why I’m so confused,” he said with a smile.
Then he went out to get his hands dirty.
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