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Phelps School's DaRon Curry headed to FDU

04/21/2015, 4:45pm EDT

By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Once he was offered by Fairleigh Dickinson last week, DaRon Curry was getting recruited by more than just the Knights’ coaching staff.

The Phelps School (Pa.) point guard was hearing from a former AAU teammate, Schalick (N.J.) power forward Mike Holloway, who wanted to reunite at the Division I level.

“He was hitting me up almost every day,” Curry said. “He was another recruiter for them.”

And on his official visit to the school on Monday night, he verbally committed to head coach Greg Herenda and staff, joining Holloway and Mercersburg Academy (N.Y.) forward Malik Miller in the Knights’ 2015 class.

“I came up with my mom...we really fell in love with the campus, it’s not too small, it’s not too big, but it’s really family oriented, and the coaching staff made me feel like I was there already, it was my home,” Curry said. “The team was just very comfortable to be around, and the playing style and the coaching style is one that I could thrive in.”

Last year, Herenda's second at the school, the Knights went 8-21 overall, with a 3-15 record in NEC play. He was previously the head coach at UMass-Lowell from 2008-2013, following up one year as the head coach at D-III Cabrini College in Radnor, Pa.

Though he was born in Philadelphia, Curry spent most of his formative years in South Jersey, playing his first two high school seasons at Deptford (N.J.) HS. It was during those years in the Garden State that he played with Holloway, as 9th graders with the Big Time Athletics AAU program.

After spending the next two seasons at the Trent Internationale School in Houston (Tex.), Curry returned to Philadelphia this season, spending a post-graduate year at the Phelps School. There, he helped the Malvern boarding school to its first PAISAA championship in February, playing alongside fellow Division I prospects like Mike Watkins (Penn State), Mustapha Traore (Monmouth) and Quincy McKnight (Sacred Heart).

“His development, his maturity and his decision making has flourished here,” Phelps head coach Brian Shanahan said. “That’s a big reason why we had success, because of DaRon Curry and his ability to be a leader.”

Herenda stepped up his pursuit of Curry in the last few weeks, following the announcement that rising junior Malachi Nix was transferring out of the Teaneck, N.J. school and its population of a little more than 4,000 undergraduates.

Curry said he was also hearing from Holy Cross, Lamar, Sam Houston State and a few other schools, but FDU was easily putting on the biggest push for his services.

“When I got contacted by Fairleigh Dickinson, they were really strong on me and they just wanted me there,” he said. “They wanted me to be there and be a point guard for them, they showed me a lot of love.”

At 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds, Curry has decent size to play on the ball in the Northeast Conference, but he's still making the transition from being an undersized scoring guard to a pass-first point guard.

“I think my year at Phelps really helped me become more of a true point guard and a leader, we had Mike Watkins, Mustapha Traore, Quincy McKnight, they were all Division I players," he said. "Being there you had to be more of a true positional point guard and a leader, because they were great players.”