City of Basketball Love

By Owen McCue (@owen.mccue)
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Khamai Orange and Beau Lyren first met back in first grade at Delco Christian.

It was probably out on the playground at recess, playing tag, or four square, or knockout, or touch football — something like that — but too long ago to for either to remember the exact details

Orange and Lyren have been friends and teammates since, going on 12 years now as they are currently in the midst of their senior campaigns for the Knights. The duo that grew up on Delco Christian basketball has the program out to a 12-1 (8-0 Bicentennial Athletic League) start and eyeing much more before their time together concludes.

“Our class is really close,” Orange said. “They’ve been hyping us up since second grade … Life happens, a couple transfers … But we’ve been sticking this out at D.C. and that shows our bond.”

“I know I can say something to Beau that I usually probably couldn’t say to other people and Beau can say something to me, but it’s all respect because we know we can say that since we’ve been together for 12 years basically.”

Orange and Lyren are both coaches’ sons. Lyren’s father Jamie was a captain at Penn under coach Fran Dunphy. Orange’s father Kenneth played at La Salle College HS and a little bit at West Chester. (Kenneth said Khamai gets his speed from his mom who ran track at West Chester.)

Jamie Lyren was formerly an assistant coach at Delco Christian and also coached Khamai and Beau for the Knights’ middle school team in seventh and eighth grade. Kenneth has been an assistant under seventh-year head coach Reggie Parks during Khamai and Beau’s four years at the varsity level.

“We’ve been teammates and classmates since first grade,” Lyren said. “His dad’s known me for that whole time. He knows me inside and out, so he knows how to coach me, how to criticize me constructively. It’s just a great relationship between the three of us. 

“Having someone like that, who’s known me for that long, and he knows the culture as well. It’s just passing that along to the younger guys because they’re next up and when we come back and watch next year, we want to see the same stuff.”

Orange and Lyren remember playing 1-on-1 during halftime of the varsity games growing up. Look through pictures of the Delco Christian basketball teams of the last decade plus and you’ll probably find the pair somewhere running around in the background.

“We could recite the whole playbook to you as seventh and eighth graders because we’ve been around,” Orange said.

They grew up watching and learning from some of the program’s best. Josh Parks (2022), the program’s most recent 1,000-point scorer heading into this season, was a senior when Orange and Lyren were freshmen, eventually going onto a career at Arcadia. Jackson Piotrowski (2019), who ranks fifth on the program’s all-time scoring list, was a player they looked up to as elementary and middle schoolers. He went on to play hoops at the University of Chicago. 

Orange joined the school’s list of 1,000-point scorers over Christmas break when he hit the milestone against Nazareth Academy on Dec. 27 . He’s seen his scoring average jump from 3.6 ppg as a freshman to 13.2 ppg, 16.8 ppg and 21.8 ppg as a sophomore, junior and senior, respectively.

He’s climbing the school’s all-time scoring list, currently at 1,128 points — 31 points from cracking into the top five. He recently had a career-high 35-point night in an 85-75 win over Chester Charter Arts that handed the Sabres their first BAL loss of the season.

“It was cool,” Orange said. “Especially, watching Josh Parks get his 1,000, everyone else get their 1,000 growing up since I’ve been at D.C. since kindergarten, it was really cool getting my 1,000th point. It shows all the hard work you put in, all the extra hours shooting.”ear.”

Lyren isn’t far from joining Orange amongst the program’s best. The 6-foot-2 guard supplemented Orange with 20 points in Monday’s win over CCA and is now within 59 points of 1,000. 

They would become the first Knights 1,000-point teammates since 2006 grads Nate House (1,369) and Russ McFarland (1,259) led the Knights to a District 1-1A championship and state quarterfinal run. They rank first and fifth, respectively, on the program’s all-time scoring list.

“We’ve been in a leadership role even last year because we fell into that role last year,” Lyren said. “We adjusted to it last year, and this year we took on even more of a leadership role with the seniors leaving. We have a young group and they look up to us. They’re a great group of guys and they look up to us, so we’re a good influence on them and that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re just trying to build a good culture, a winning culture.”

The Knights had to replace five members of last year’s rotation heading into the season, including their third and fourth leading scorers, respectively, in Caleb Jameson (Hill School) and Josiah Gaines.

Atler Abobi is the only other senior on this Knights squad. Junior Bradford Berwick (11.3 ppg, 6.9 rpg) and sophomore Karter Shaheed-Freeman (10.3 ppg, 7.0 rpg) are two of the players who have taken big leaps forward. They’ll be two of the next Knights to take the reins once Orange and Lyren graduate this winter.

“We want to pass on what we know from 10 years of playing D.C. basketball to them, so they can grow us as leaders, as young men, especially young Christian men at D.C.,” Orange said. “That’s really all it’s about. Of course we want to win and all that stuff this year, but at the backend we want to get them prepared for next year.”

Delco Christian is hoping to learn a little bit more about itself with non-league matchups against Marple Newtown and Pope John Paul II upcoming on Friday and Saturday. In the BAL, the Knights still face MaST Charter (8-2) on Jan. 29 and the regular season finale against Dock Mennonite on Feb. 6 will be a good test before the postseason and a possible BAL title game preview. The Knights lost to Dock in the BAL title game last season.

Orange and Lyren have helped their team make three straight appearances in the District 1-2A championship game and the program has gone four straight times in a row, dating back to 2020-21. They’ve lost four straight times, following those defeats with losses to Constitution in the first round of the state playoffs in each of the last two years.

“Especially for me and Khamai, we’re hungry to win a championship because it’s our senior year,” Lyren said. “We haven’t won one yet. We’ve been there every year."