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“Basketball is a beautiful sport, a beautiful tool for learning—but it’s not an end, it’s only a [means] to become a better person.”
The father of basketball, James Naismith, lived by a simple maxim: “Be strong in body, clean in mind, lofty in ideals.” The Ontario-born physician, philosopher and coach coined the adage not long after he invented the popular sport in 1891.
In the century since, these words have helped guide the professional paths of some of basketball’s greatest players. Consider Bill Bradley, an NBA champion with the New York Knicks in 1970 and 1973, and one of the sport’s few Rhodes scholars. Following a celebrated Hall-of-Fame career, Bradley went on to become a U.S. senator, a presidential contender and an author. Then there’s the Congolese-born All-Star Dikembe Mutombo, a four-time Defensive Player of the Year who will arguably be remembered as much for his shot-blocking abilities as the $29-million state-of-art hospital he helped build in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that this commitment to being a fully rounded athlete has not been lost on Naismith’s birth country. In 1994, the Canadian Interuniversity Sport association (CIS) established the Ken Shields Award. Named for the winning-est coach in the history of CIS men’s hoops, the annual award is handed out to the male student-athlete who best exemplifies Naismith’s ideal of excellence in three areas: on the court, in the classroom and among the community.
For the 2008-2009 season, Jérôme Turcotte-Routhier, a six-foot-four point guard for Université Laval’s Rouge et Or, was awarded the honour. The first Quebec athlete to garner the prestigious award, there is little question of Jérôme’s athletic bona fides: during his freshman year he landed a spot on the Québec Student Sports Federation’s all-rookie team and this past season he netted 11.5 points per game and ranked among the top eight conference leaders in rebounds (7.3), assists (4.0) and steals (1.8) per game.
But it’s his record in academics and the community that makes him really stand out. Studying for a Bachelor of Laws, Jérôme carried a grade point average of 3.50 (out of 4.33) into his winter semester. His commitment to community is equally impressive; the 22-year-old volunteers with his university’s chapter of Lawyers Without Borders and does search-and-rescue work for the Canadian Coast Guard during the summer. In addition, he is a frequent guest speaker at Québec elementary schools—where he shares advice on growing up big, strong and smart—and is the former host of a radio talk show in Québec City on which he extolled the virtues of a healthy lifestyle.
But, getting to this point didn't come naturally at first.
“I had trouble learning in my primary school. I had bad results— maybe I wasn’t focused enough,” he says from Québec City. A francophone, he speaks in nearly perfect English. “Coming into high school, my mother told me it would be really difficult, and that I would have to work harder [than I had before]. She put me in the right state of mind.”
His mother encouraged Jérôme to embrace the principle of generalized reciprocity (better known as “paying it forward”) something he since adopted as something of a personal philosophy. At the same time he managed to turn his grades around, a credit he says, to the powers of organization and discipline. By the time he arrived at his CEGEP he was a standout in his class.
Playing basketball at a high level requires a heady mix of mathematics, logic, reasoning and interpersonal psychology (not to mention athleticism) and Jérôme says the sport has helped train his focus for schoolwork, and vice versa.
In 2006, his new-found dedication in the classroom helped him win a prestigious SIRC-CCAA Academic All Canadian Award. He was soon scouted by several National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball programs in the U.S., but chose Université Laval (whose campus is just outside Quebec City) instead.
“This community and the people around me have made me the person I am,” he explains. “I wanted to give something back to those people, and I can have a bigger impact here [at Laval] than I could in Pittsburgh or anywhere else [in America].”
His decision to stay in Canada had its costs. Student-athletes in Canadian universities are not coddled like their U.S. counterparts. There’s no massive recruiting machine, all-expenses-paid scholarships (which sometimes including under-the-table handouts), primetime network television exposure or any other perks. Canadian ballers take the same courses as their non-playing peers and are held to the same academic standards for graduation. Athletic scholarships in Canada’s universities are limited to the cost of tuition, and are relatively rare—Jérôme says only a few players on the Rouge et Or’s current roster have received them.
“It can be really hard to motivate yourself when you’re in a hotel room with the guys and you have to study,” he says. “But we have a special team. We have guys who are going to be engineers and scientists, we have three or four who are studying business. It helps to have people around me who are focussed, not only on the sport but at school as well.”
For most CIS basketball players, graduation day marks the end of their athletic careers. Some go on to play in semi-professional leagues in North America (the NBA is virtually unheard of); others transition into coaching. A select few sign up with European professional leagues, which is Jérôme’s ambition. He intends to pursue a master’s degree after finishing his bachelor’s at Laval, and would like to join a “small, part-time league” that allows him to continue his studies.
“I don’t want to play basketball for the rest of my life, for sure. Basketball is a beautiful sport, a beautiful tool for learning—but it’s not an end, it’s only a [means] to become a better person.”
Former University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) coach John Wooden, one of basketball’s most revered teachers, built championship teams with aphorisms like, “You can do more good by being good than any other way,” and “Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.” These words resonate with the Rouge et Or’s star player. The team did not contend for the CIS title this year and there’s no guarantee it will reach the national finals during Turcotte-Routhier’s remaining years at Laval. Either way, he’s already keeping an eye on larger, more lasting rewards.
“When I started getting involved with my community, I didn’t know about the Ken Shields prize, quite honestly. It’s a beautiful thing, especially that I’m the first Québecker to win,” Turcotte-Routhier says. “But some of the things I’ve been told [by the children I speak with] are a lot more rewarding than any trophy. You don’t work hard, you don’t learn, just to get awards.”