At the time, Jarvis Vaughan was embarrassed.
He was a 5-foot-10,10-year-old kid who looked like he should be a great basketball player. But, the thing was, he wasn’t. Not even close. He lacked most of the skills needed to be good at basketball and his knowledge of the sport was almost nonexistent.
Vaughan had just arrived in Staunton from Lakeland, Florida, where he had been a football player. It was the summer before his fifth-grade year and Vaughan walked into a Staunton gym for the first time. He was dragged there by his new friend, Kaiseem Simms, for a basketball practice.
Simms saw what everyone else did — Vaughan was taller than the other players his age. Simms watched an extremely uncoordinated Vaughan dunk on an 8-foot rim, and remembers Vaughan cutting his hand on that rim, then swearing he would never dunk again.
“You the only one out here who can do it so you’re going to have to,” Simms told him.
When Vaughan walked into that gym, someone asked him to name his favorite basketball player. Most kids, at that time, would have said LeBron James or Kevin Durant or Kobe Bryant. Vaughan’s answer: The Tasmanian Devil.
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You know, the 2-foot-4 Wonder from Down Under. One of the TuneSquad’s starting five against the Monstars. Taz in the movie “Space Jam.” Yeah, a cartoon character was his favorite player.
“That’s what I knew as basketball,” Vaughan said. “That team’s nice. The TuneSquad.”
The embarrassment got considerably worse the first time Vaughan had to display his basketball skills during tryouts for an AAU team, the Staunton Heat.
“He came into the park gym when we had tryouts,” Mike Entsminger said. “He said ‘I wanna play basketball.’ I asked him if he knew how to play, he said ‘Oh yeah.’ So I told him go make a layup. He asked me what that was so I showed him. He banged it off the backboard hard, not a chance of it going in.”
Vaughan didn’t even dribble the ball down the court. All he knew was football, so he put the basketball under his arm and took off like he was avoiding linebackers.
Now, almost eight years later, it’s difficult to believe that’s the same person. He’s certainly not the same player.
Vaughan has been named to the Virginia High School League’s all-state basketball first team the past two years. He was the district and regional player of the year this season. And, after averaging 17.8 points and 7.8 rebounds a game this season and getting Lee High to the state championship game for the second-straight year, Vaughan is The News Leader’s All-City/County Player of the Year.
“His size, length and athleticism set him apart from other players in the area,” said East Rockingham coach Carey Keyes. “Those qualities make him very difficult to guard. He can dominate the game inside and has a good mid-range game. He thrives in transition and on the offensive glass. Our game plan was always to limit his touches as well as always have a body on him, but that sometimes was easier said than done.”
Vaughan has verbally committed to play at Old Dominion University next year, but that’s not a definite yet. He hasn’t signed, and there has been talk of attending a prep school for a year before heading to the Norfolk school.
A lot will be determined over the next two months. Vaughan is set to take his SATs in May, and said he’s committed to studying hard so he does well.
“It will determine where my future lies,” he said.
ODU is still very much in the picture, Vaughan said. He even got some extra motivation to do well on his SATs so he can play for the Monarchs next year. That motivation came while watching a former teammate.
There was a lot of attention in Staunton paid to former Leemen Darius George, a freshman at Marshall, one of the schools in this year’s NCAA Tournament. Marshall upset Wichita State in the first round of March Madness.
“It gives me motivation to know that one year ago this guy was playing beside me, he was one of my brothers and we were on the court dominating together,” Vaughan said. “If he’s doing it, I’m going to have to do it as well and put the city of Staunton on the map.”
Last year, Vaughan and George led Lee High to a state championship, but without George, Vaughan’s job was more difficult this year. Last year, opponents had to pick their poison — double one, and the other would get you. This year, teams could double Vaughan, clog the lane and make him work hard to score.
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“The guards stepped up to help,” Vaughan said. “[Jalen Henderson] was that spark that no one knew about yet. And Jayden [Williams] always brought what he brings to the table, sound defense and his IQ level of the game.”
Lee finished 26-4 this year — 26-3 with Vaughan, who sat out a four-point loss to East Rockingham in early January — and won the Shenandoah District regular-season and tournament titles, as well as the Region 2B championship. Vaughan was a big part of that.
“Jarvis grew into a leadership position more,” fellow Lee senior Tre’ Simmons said. “He also stepped into those big roles when we needed him. He came in clutch in numerous games. He always kept us positive no matter the odds.”
Lee returned to the state title game a year after beating Amelia County for the championship, but this time came out on the wrong end of the score, losing to Gate City.
Vaughan is naturally competitive. After the loss, he took it hard. He was nowhere to be seen in the media room at VCU’s Siegel Center after the game. And in the hallway outside of the room, where many of his teammates could be seen, Vaughan was absent as well.
“It kind of angered me,” Vaughan said. “I was just so down on myself and so sad that we lost that there was no other emotion to feel other than mad. It was just infuriating.”
But a week and change after the game, Vaughan has gotten past some, but not all, of that anger.
“We accomplished more than others and we also fell short in what we wanted to do,” he said. “It was a really good feeling to make it back to states to VCU and to play at VCU for my senior year, but it was also one of those tough, bittersweet moments where, like, no one wants to play to lose. It just hurt that fact that I couldn’t walk away my senior year a state champ.”’’
But Vaughan also realizes that the basketball game marked the final one for many of the seniors. He feels fortunate that he’ll have the opportunity to keep playing. His grandfather used to warn him that the odds of being a big-time basketball player were miniscule. He’d tell him that he was more likely to become a neurosurgeon than an NBA player.
Vaughan keeps that saying in the back of his mind. He knows he’s lucky to be where he is, but still has a lot of work to do if he wants to accomplish his dream of playing professionally one day.
Although, considering where he is now, compared to just eight years ago, no one is betting against Vaughan achieving those dreams.