From Senegal with Basketball

December 14, 2009
Brendan Kuty

Scared, alone, Lionel Gomis could barely lift his eyes the first time he stood on Blair Academy’s campus.

Home was an ocean away. Worse, the teenage basketball prodigy was surrounded by strangers speaking a language he didn’t know.

“Where the hell am I?” Gomis asked himself after reaching his dorm room that night more than a year ago.

Now, big-time college scouts ask Joe Mantegna a similar question.

“He’s got a chance to play at the highest level of college basketball,” the Buccaneers’ head coach said, “and he’s certainly got a chance to make money playing basketball.”

Gomis, Blair’s 6-foot-9 Senegalese center, has spring-loaded legs and saucer-sized hands.

Gomis, a junior, also has a chance to follow in the sneakers of Royal Ivey, Charlie Villanueva and Luol Deng — all current NBA players and former Blair stars.

“He’s in hot demand,” Sports for Education and Economic Development Foundation (SEEDS) U.S. operations manager Brian Benjamin said in a telephone interview.

It wasn’t always this way.

Gomis didn’t start playing basketball until age 14. Soccer ruled Dakar — Senegal’s capital and Gomis’ hometown.

But after a few days of basketball — which, he said, included multiple dunks on family members — Gomis realized something: This sport could pave his road to a better education, a better life.

Then tragedy struck.

His mother died, leaving him and his two older sisters with just his father, a middle-class banker. Gomis wishes his mother could see him now.

“When she passed, that’s when I really started improving my basketball skills,” he said. “I showed her that I started loving the game.”

“She was always reminding me to never forget about my studies. That was the only thing she wanted from me.”

Soon Gomis caught the eye of SEEDS founder and Dallas Mavericks director of scouting and vice president of international affairs Amadou Gallo Fall. He invited Gomis to join Senegal’s SEEDS Academy, which provides its students 10 months of athletic training and academic guidance.

Fall, also from Dakur, saw a lot of himself in Gomis.

“Great kid,” Fall said in a telephone interview. “Obviously high-energy. He wants to be good and he’s eager.’’

At SEEDS, Gomis refined his game and study habits and became his team’s unquestioned captain.

“He became a leader out of 20 boys,” Benjamin said. “It was a no-brainer that when we were talking with Joe that he would be a logical fit.”

Mantegna agreed to take Gomis without seeing him play. Instead, Mantegna embraced San Antonio Spurs general manager R.C. Buford’s recommendation and his own history with SEEDS. Cameroon native Alexis Wangmene, a former SEEDS standout, graduated from Blair in 2007 and plays at the University of Texas.

Gomis was grateful for the opportunity. But he was also afraid.

“I felt like I had what I wanted,” he said. “But I was going to have to leave my family.” Gomis, traveling with friend and Lake Forest Academy (Ill.) senior Remey Ndiaye, landed at John F. Kennedy Airport on June 13, 2008. He said the fresh air, of all things, awed him most.

“It was the same thing I saw in my dreams,” Gomis said.

Gomis spent the next few weeks in Manhattan with his legal guardian, who requested anonymity. Then it was off to the Chicago school for a monthlong English language crash course.

When Gomis arrived in Blairstown, he said he immediately felt pressure. Would Mantegna like him? Would he understand the plays and mesh with the team?

“It was kind of awkward,” Gomis said. “The game was faster than I thought. And my teammates were trying to get me into the atmosphere of the team, joking around. But I didn’t understand in the beginning because I didn’t understand the language.”

Said Mantegna, “He was just like a young colt that can’t quite keep his legs under him. He was raw, physical, a little weak. And there were three 19-year-old big guys that basically knocked him down every day.”

Austin Johnson, a Rutgers University freshman guard, was one of them. Gomis spent the season mired on the Buccaneers’ bench frustrated, upset. But Johnson, who couldn’t be interviewed due to NCAA recruiting rules, helped Gomis assimilate, introducing him to students, teaching him the playbook.

Still, Gomis took his bench role like a gut punch.

“He felt like he didn’t play because he wasn’t good enough,” Benjamin said. “If he wasn’t good enough, (he believed) he was pretty much letting down all of Senegal.”

Gomis got a better grip on English while living with his guardian in Manhattan for the summer. And in June, Gomis attended the NBA Draft with other SEEDS representatives and even had his photo snapped with commissioner David Stern.

He returned to Blair in the fall like a new kid. With the language barrier weakened, Gomis flourished on the court, muscling into the starting five while drawing interest from Stanford University, Davidson College and other Division I programs.

“He made a big jump this summer,” Mantegna said. “He put on a half-inch of size and 15 pounds. He’s finally starting to fill out his broad shoulder and become an explosive athlete.”

Then Mantegna paused.

“Now he’s kind of the big man on campus,” he said. “He’s come a long way.”

Posted 12/15/09

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