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Lower Merion senior Harrison Klevan stepping up for Aces

01/23/2018, 11:15pm EST
By Josh Verlin

Harrison Klevan (above) is making a significant impact in his senior year at Lower Merion. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Ever since he was a young boy, Harrison Klevan has wanted to play basketball for Lower Merion High School.

Now, he’s finally getting his chance to play a significant role for the Aces’ varsity squad -- and he’s not letting it pass him by.

The senior guard has stepped up big-time for Lower Merion this season, playing a crucial role on a team that’s got Central League title aspirations, not to mention high hopes for the district and state tournaments as well.

After scoring a career-high 25 points in a win over Neshaminy on Sunday afternoon, the 6-foot-tall, 150-pound guard followed that up with a 15-point outing in a 77-69 win over Springfield (Delco.) on Tuesday evening.

“I’ve been an Aces fan for a while, so to be playing meaningful minutes for this team and producing has been really good,” he said. “Feels great.”

Born and raised in Lower Merion Township, Klevan says he’s attended basketball camps run by Aces coach Gregg Downer from the time he was four years old.

Downer remembers Klevan a few years older than that, but it was far from obvious that the elementary school-aged boy would one day be playing meaningful minutes of varsity basketball for any program, much less one of the more storied teams around.

“I was always impressed by his work ethic and kind of his gym rat mentality,” Downer said. “He was very small-ish when he was younger, and recently he’s gotten stronger and he’s done some good things in the weight room.

“Any time you have a kid that you’ve known from about the age of eight on, wanting so badly to succeed in your program, and then he has that success, it’s really kind of a neat feeling,” the 28th-year head coach added. “I’ve known him for a long time, and you want kids that work hard -- and in this case dream about Lower Merion basketball, you want them to have success, and I think a lot of people feel very good about that.”

Klevan spent his whole sophomore season playing junior varsity basketball, aiming to make the varsity roster as a junior. But after what he deemed a “rough offseason,” Klevan had to go through tryouts; he made the varsity roster, but got most of his playing time in JV games.

Finally, this summer, it became clear that Klevan would be at the very least a key reserve for the Aces. And when projected started Theo Henry suffered a season-ending foot injury in the preseason, Klevan found himself in the starting lineup.

Putting on that Lower Merion varsity jersey, just like he’d watched former LM standouts like Ryan Brooks (Temple), Garret Williamson (St. Joe’s), B.J. Johnson (Syracuse/La Salle) and many others do over the years, was a surreal experience at first. No longer is he the little kid in the stands watching Lower Merion basketball; he’s one of the players the next generation of players are watching.

“I think about it sometimes,” Klevan admitted, “but I try not to get too caught up in that. I try to just play like I’ve been doing my whole life.”

Klevan isn’t needed to be the star for this Lower Merion squad, which improved to 14-3 overall (9-2 Central League) with the Springfield win.


Jack Forrest (above) had 27 points to lead Lower Merion in the win. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

That’s on the junior class, namely wing Jack Forrest and guard Steve Payne, who combined for 50 points Tuesday night.

Forrest, a 6-5 sharpshooter with an offer from Penn -- Quakers head coach Steve Donahue was in attendance, as he’s been at several LM games this season -- had 27 points and nine rebounds, despite fighting off the flu. Payne, a 6-1 guard and D-I prospect in his own right, had 23 points, eight rebounds and six assists.

Klevan was the third member of the team in double figures, and had a key role in Lower Merion’s game-changing 33-7 stretch that lasted the final three minutes of the second quarter and the first five minutes of the third.

Before that, Springfield had held a 20-18 lead; by the time the Cougars got their feet under them again, it was a 24-point deficit.

Springfield did rally late to make it as close as a nine-point game in the closing minutes, thanks to the efforts of senior guards Mike Webb (28 points) and Ja’Den McKenzie (12 points, six rebounds), who combined for 22 of the Cougars’ 35 fourth-quarter points.

“I wasn’t happy with the way that game closed, I thought we really struggled to close the game off, but we’ve got some illness, we’ve got some nagging injuries,” Downer said. “At the end of the day you just want to make the [Central League] final four and put yourself in position to possibly just win the league championship, and I think it’s going to take about 12 wins to guarantee that.”

Winners of five straight games, Lower Merion has two tough road trips ahead, playing at Upper Darby on Friday and Garnet Valley next Tuesday; both the Royals and Jaguars are 8-3 in league play, one game back of LM and Penncrest for the league lead. All four are in good shape to make the league’s semifinals; Springfield (6-9, 6-5) had been in fifth place entering play Tuesday night, but now sits two games back of a playoff spot.

The last time Lower Merion -- which won the Central League championship last year -- went all the way was in 2013, when Johnson and Yohanny Dalembert (James Madison) led the Aces to a revenge win over archrival Chester, the same team they’d lost to in the district championship game that year, to capture the PIAA AAAA crown.

Klevan was in the stands at Hershey’s GIANT Center that day, soaking it all in. Now, in potentially the last year of his meaningful hoops career -- Klevan is debating between trying to play at the Division III level or just going to a school like Penn State, Maryland or Clemson -- he’s hoping to put the lessons he learned from the stands onto the court.

“I just saw a lot of determined players,” Klevan said. “They were determined to win, that’s where I learned the refuse-to-lose attitude at Lower Merion.

“They weren’t going to lose that game,” he added. “I feel that [way] now.”


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