Kyle Sharp wraps up his high-school hoops career with a
second-straight Most Valuable Player award
Hollister – When Kyle Sharp was in the seventh grade, he told his father, Alan, that he wanted to play college basketball someday. HIs dad told him that it would take a lot of hard work to get there and there would be many obstacles to overcome along the way.
Fast forward six years to present day and Sharp has conquered those obstacles and his dream has come full circle. He’ll be heading to Missoula, Montana this summer to get ready to play for coach Larry Krystkowiak’s University of Montana Grizzlies, a team that qualified for the NCAA Tournament on Wednesday with a win over Weber State in the Big Sky Conference championship game.
Sharp, San Benito High’s 6-foot-7 standout center/forward, finished up his storybook high-school basketball career by earning an unprecentented second-straight League-MVP following a season that saw him average 28.4 points per game and lead the Haybalers all the way to the semifinal round of the Central Coast Section playoffs.
“Kyle’s been a great person, not just a great athlete, to coach,” said Hollister head coach David Kaplansky, who coached Sharp during his four years at San Benito High. “A lot of athletes that have his ability will sometimes shun coaches or approach the game like they know everything. But Kyle was great, he’s a great student of the game.”
Sharp’s performance this season left no question as to his athletic ability, determination and intensity. His dominance was on display all season long. Weather it was the 36-point outburst against James Lick earlier this season or his 20-point performance against top-ranked North Salinas less than two weeks removed from an ankle injury, Sharp has always seemed to find a way to get it done.
But what many local hoops fans who have followed Sharp for the last four years might not know is that he has had to overcome a big hurdle in his life, one that makes a bad line in the box score seem utterly insignificant.
About the same time that Sharp was making up his mind that he wanted to play college ball, he started to have some health problems. He began losing serious weight and, at 6-foot-3, he weighed a mere 120 pounds. He was constantly dehydrated, tired all of the time and was having difficulty breathing. His family had him checked out and learned that Kyle had diabetes.
That little black bag that he carries with him in and out of the locker room… there’s no bubble gum or Sharpies to sign autographs with in there. Rather, it holds his blood sugar testing equipment and syringes for insulin injections.
“It was really scary getting used to it,” said Sharp on having to inject himself on a daily basis. “The first time I did it, I sat down and ate dinner and then had to do an injection. I was scared and told my parents that I didn’t want to do it but my mom told me how serious it was and that I really needed to.”
He doesn’t talk about it a lot. And it’s not that he’s embarrassed because of his medical condition, he doesn’t want the built in excuse of, ‘Oh, Sharp had an off night on the court, must’ve been his blood sugar.’
Sharp’s determination and character have allowed him to not only live with diabetes, but to turn it into a positive.
Because of his condition, Sharp is incredibly in-tune with what his body is doing at all times. Keeping healthy helps the diabetes a great deal and Sharp strives to keep himself physically balanced. He knows when to push his body and he knows when things are just right in his system.
“I accept it. I actually think of it the terms of, there’s a lot worse things that could have happened to me,” said Sharp, who used to have to inject himself up to nine times a day to keep the diabetes in check. “It’s not cancer. I mean, you could die from it, but if you regulate it, you’ll be fine. I can live my life just like everybody else, it’s just a couple of extra things I have to deal with every day.”
That’s just how Sharp looks at things as a well-rounded person who was brought up right.
Sharp will be leaving a lot behind here in Hollister when he leaves for Missoula, where he figures to be a big factor in the Grizzlies’ hopes of making NCAA tournament appearances the norm as one of coach Krystkowiak’s first recruits.
Anyone who has ever been to a Haybaler home game has seen his cheering section. All sorts of people from outside the Sharp family show up wearing No. 40 sweaters and cheer for Hollister’s Division I-bound Sharp.
This has meant a lot to Sharp and he’ll no doubt miss that, in addition to his teammates, who he can’t say enough good things about, to coach Kaplansky, whom he has absolute respect for and holds in high regards.
But the people of Hollister can expect to see Sharp again soon. The Grizzlies will be swinging through northern California early next season for a couple of games. We’ll also be able to watch him play in the Big Sky Conference tournament in the upcoming years and, given his potential and what he’s already managed to do with his basketball skills, we just might be seeing Sharp on the floor for an NBA team someday in the not-so-distant future.
