Philly Basketball 24 • 7 • 365

City of Basketball Love

Current Section

Home

Drexel made perfect pitch for Canady

02/18/2013, 10:00pm EST

By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
–

Major Canady knew Drexel was the right fit when two coaches came to see one of his games.

One of his soccer games.

Canady, headed to Drexel to play basketball in the fall, also played sweeper on Kiski’s varsity soccer team. It was on the pitch, on a cold October night in Baltimore, that Drexel assistants Bobby Jordan and Matt Collier stopped by on a whim to see Kiski’s soccer team play Boys’ Latin. It turned out to be a good decision.

“No basketball coach had ever come to my soccer game,” Canady said. “(That’s) actually what put them over the hump.”

A 6-foot-3 combo guard, Canady had been hearing from a number of schools after he decommitted from South Florida last summer. Drexel, looking for the eventual replacement for current junior point guard Frantz Massenat, didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to get a high-major guard.

“He was our number one target so we just wanted to recruit him really hard,” said Jordan, a Roman Catholic grad currently in his first year as a Drexel assistant after playing four years at the school. “He wasn’t playing basketball at the time…because he was playing soccer, so we figured we’d go down to the soccer game.”

“It was my first-ever high school soccer game,” Jordan added.

And though he might not have known what he was watching–Jordan admitted the only position he knew was goalie–it was that dedication that showed Canady he was going to the right place.

“When I came and visited, me and my family loved the coaching staff,” Canady said.

While he certainly wouldn’t be the first collegiate athlete to play two varsity sports, Canady is giving up his cleats and shinguards and focusing solely hoops when he gets to Philadelphia.

“I’m definitely going to miss it,” he said. “I’m definitely going to miss soccer, because it’s something that I grew up loving, it’s a competitive sport, fun sport.

“But I love basketball, it’s my main sport, so I’m giving it up for a better cause.”

A soccer-first athlete when he was younger, Canady first got into serious basketball when he started playing AAU basketball in sixth grade. He gave up the soccer pitch for the football field as his other sport, though he went back to his first love for high school.

By that point, however, his future on the hardwood was starting to look brighter.

“Around my freshman year of high school, we played a lot of high-level competition in AAU, and I was scoring around 20 points per game against some top competition,” Canady said, “and my coaches and adults that were around me just kept telling me that if I really worked I could make money playing basketball someday. And that stuck with me, and I started working hard and working on perfecting my craft.”

“The kid is a competitor,” Kiski coach Daryn Freedman said about his star senior. “No one likes to lose, but there’s two people who can’t stand it more than anybody else in that locker and it’s Major and I. He wants to win every game and when he sets a goal, he accomplishes it.”

That mentality is a large reason that Kiski pulled off two of the biggest victories in school history this season, defeating national No. 1 Brewster Academy and then ultra-talented Tilton (N.H.) in the same weekend back in November.

“That was a huge statement weekend,” Canady said. “That definitely put us on the map and we showed people that you don’t always have to have big names to be competitive and big names to win.”

Canady fell short of his ultimate goal, a state title in his senior year, when Kiski fell to Germantown Academy in the finals. Still, he’s part of a talented 3-man recruiting class that includes Mohamed Bah and Rodney Williams arriving on campus next year to join an already-talented nucleus consisting of 2012 CAA MVP runner-up Massenat, All-CAA selection Damion Lee and 6-7 wing Tavon Allen, a redshirt freshman who looks poised to play a major role on Dragon teams over the next few years.

“I love the team, I’m really looking forward to working with Frantz Massenat next year,” Canady said. “I don’t always get a chance to watch all the games live just because I live on campus at Kiski, but when I go home I TiVo all the games and study them.”

And he’s already setting goals for the fall.

“We’re definitely coming next year to bring in new swag to the team,” Canady said. “There are a lot of hard workers there, we’re going to be a more hard-working mentality, and we’re going to get it rolling this year.”