City of Basketball Love

By Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
__

Going through the recruiting process was an enlightening experience for Amber Howard.

The Bensalem senior has always valued the strength of a relationship, so when the time came for her to select the place she’d play college basketball, that was certainly going to weigh heavily. She also wasn’t going to rush into making a choice either, she’d put in a lot of work in the last three years, so it had to count.

Howard didn’t waste her decision, taking her time and making sure it was the right one when she committed to North Carolina A&T on Thursday.

“Just because you got the offer doesn’t mean it’s forever,” Howard said. “You’re not guaranteed to go there. I had a few places I had an offer from that just fell back, it was like ‘when they need you, they need you’ and if they don’t need you, there’s not an offer.

“When I first came into this, I thought I could take my time and all these offers would be there forever, but it doesn’t work like that. You have to be really smart with your decision.”

Howard’s relationship with NC A&T actually goes back a few years. The Aggies, then part of the MEAC, were the first program to extend her an offer back when she was a freshman with promising upside at Bensalem.

Things cooled for a bit between the two parties as Howard continued to hone her game both at Bensalem and on the grassroots circuit, but there was still interest both ways. Even as she collected more offers and had plenty of programs watching her this summer as she played with the Philly Rise 17U EYBL team on the national Nike EYBL circuit, Howard wanted to give NC A&T a fair chance.

She reconnected with the coaches and while they were certainly excited, they did have some catching up to do. They had to have liked what they saw, Howard’s game having grown a lot since her first year of high school ball.

“I didn’t start talking with them again until this year, right around the beginning of the spring,” Howard said. “I really liked their campus and the school. We built the relationship back up and my first official visit was with them. They still wanted to see me play a little bit and as I did, I thought I really wanted to go there because I fit best there.”

Bensalem coach Steve Johnson, entering his fourth year leading the Owls, wasn’t surprised Howard went with NC A&T. Johnson, who teaches business and technology classes at Bensalem, emphasized how much loyalty means to the All-SOL senior.

Even with her packed schedule of travel tournaments the last three years, Howard has been a mainstay at Bensalem’s offseason and team workouts. That alone has been invaluable for Johnson and his staff, but Howard’s impact on the program has gone much deeper.

Just last week, she was a counselor as the Owls ran their first summer camp and Johnson lauded the way she helped and cheered on the campers.

“She’s taught me more about coaching than I could ever teach her about basketball, and I’m thankful to have her in our program,” Johnson said. “I think this offseason in particular has been great for us. I was a first-year coach, she was a freshman, we came in together but it took time to build our relationship, and I felt like we really opened up to each other this summer.”

NC A&T, which moved from the MEAC to the CAA this past season, certainly pulled out all the stops. The coaches came to see Howard play several times with the Rise, including late-summer events in Chicago and Orlando.

A 6-foot-1 wing, Howard has put in a lot of time to build out her game, growing from an athletic rim-attacker as an underclassman to a well-varied player going into her senior year. This summer, that meant stepping out of her comfort zone to play as the big for her Rise squad, often playing the “5” spot and guarding other team’s bigs or post players.

“I feel like I was always versatile but I think I got even more versatile being able to shoot the ball more, go to the basket and my defense, being able to guard girls who were bigger than me,” Howard said. “I had to always guard the 5, I wasn’t guarding any guards, so they liked that I stepped up to that role. They were proud to see that I was willing to step up and do what was needed for the team.”

Johnson wasn’t surprised that Howard was so willing to take a role she wasn’t comfortable in this summer and make it her own. When someone has put in the amount of work the senior has, that part of it rarely does come as a surprise.

What continues to impress her high school coach is how she manages to do it all.

“She has to have more frequent flier miles than anyone I know, ” Johnson said. “It comes down to her being willing to put the work in.”

While Howard felt like she wasn’t able to show as much as she wanted to this summer, it didn’t stop programs from coming her way. She had a final four that included Seton Hall, Iona and Bucknell along with NC A&T, the strength of her relationship with the Aggies staff helping sway her that way.

At the next level, Howard said the NC A&T staff sees her playing as more of a “3” on the wing. To help sell the vision, they put together a little preview.
“They had a girl who was just like me, so they made a whole video showing all the similar things me and her did,” Howard said. “They had a video of her, then it would be a video of me doing the exact same thing, so that was really cool to see.”

Another really important factor was the academic side. Howard is planning to study nursing in college, following a family tradition. Her mom is a nurse and her older sister is currently in college studying nursing, so it was a pretty easy choice in what academic path she wanted to follow.

Neither Howard or Johnson have experienced the postseason yet in their time at Bensalem, so that’s a clear goal for them and the program overall heading into 2023-24. A good number of the Owls are multi-sport athletes and will start their fall practices next week and while they’re doing that, Johnson and Howard will likely be in the gym getting ready for when it’s time to bring everyone back together.

“She’s big on being a torch lighter instead of just a torch carrier. She wants to start something instead of just wanting to join and be part of something that’s already going good,” Johnson said. “That’s something we’ve been talking about the last three years as a program, being a torch lighter against being a torch carrier and that’s something I think fits Amber.”

NC A&T’s move to the CAA is a benefit for Johnson, who said he plans to be at quite a few road games and didn’t rule out a couple seven-hour drives to the Aggies’ home venue once Howard gets on campus. Having a chance to help her new program make a name for itself in its new conference is definitely on Howard’s mind as well, but she’s got something just as important to take care of before that.

Having made the right choice for herself, now it’s time to go all-in for her final act with Bensalem.

“With senior year coming up, that was going to be a big focus for me so it was a big relief just finally committing,” Howard said. “I’m ready to really focus on this high school season coming up, I want to make it the best one because it’s the last one.”