Lesson Learned

The basketball landscape is strewn with the shattered lives of players who had game but not much more.

“Playground legends,” Ike Harmon calls them. Players with remarkable basketball ability who could never quite put it together in the real world.

“I was on the same track of not doing the things I had to do,” Harmon said. “I thought basketball was everything. But I was wrong, and I know that now. I don’t want it to happen to me.”

Harmon begins his second season playing for Cal State Fullerton at Kansas State on Monday. He still wants to be as successful in basketball as he can be, even have a shot at the NBA someday, but his entire life doesn’t revolve around a bouncing brown ball.

“I think I’ve matured a lot,” he said. “I’ve matured as a student in the classroom, and as a respectable person on campus. Being an athlete, you never know who might be watching you, and I don’t want anyone to say, ‘That Ike Harmon, he’s just a butt-head.’ ”

Harmon, who played at Century and Santa Ana Valley high schools, already has had to go through the indignity of sitting out his freshman year as a Proposition 48 nonqualifier. Under those guidelines, athletes who don’t meet the minimum NCAA academic standards can enroll but can’t compete as freshmen. “It made me realize that in order to play basketball, you have to do the other things,” Harmon said. “Basketball is a reward.”

It took Harmon only one season to become one of the Big West Conference’s best players. A 6-foot-7 forward with outstanding quickness and jumping ability, Harmon ranked 13th in scoring (15.3 points) and 11th in rebounding (6.4) last season.

That despite being troubled nearly the entire season by foot problems. Painful bunions developed on both Harmon’s big toes, and he had surgery last spring. Some of the bone had to be shaved away, and the tendons that locked the toe joints were loosened.

“The pain was really bad last season,” Harmon said. “It was to the point that I almost was ready to quit, but my inner strength kept telling me to fight through it. I kept thinking there was a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Titan Coach Bob Hawking hopes the surgery will make a difference.

“People didn’t see Ike at his best last year,” Hawking said. “We didn’t say a lot about it then, but he was really hurting at times. Any time you have to jump and land on your feet as much as you do in basketball, it has to affect your performance. He had a terrific year under the circumstances, but I think we’ll see a guy playing at another level this year.”

Harmon already has shown signs of doing exactly that. He had 32 points and 13 rebounds in the team’s first exhibition game last week against High Five America, a collection of former college players.

Also, when NBA players Cedric Ceballos and Bruce Bowen--both former Titans--worked out at Fullerton recently, Harmon held his own against both.

“Ike definitely showed he has the ability to stay with them,” said assistant coach Bob Thornton, who played eight years in the NBA. “It’s just going to be a matter of him developing all the little things about his game.”

But Hawking says it’s too early to begin measuring Harmon’s professional chances.

“He still has some hurdles to go over, but he has the potential to be one of the premier college players on the West Coast,” Hawking said. “And he could have a pro future down the road. So much of that is in his hands. But the thing that so many people lose sight of is that last season was his first playing college basketball.”

High Expectations

His first year of college basketball was a big adjustment for Harmon.

“When I first came in, I had that young freshmen mentality,” he said. “But a lot was put on me that first year. A lot was expected. I either had to mature and deal with it, or handle it like a kid and just kind of blow it off. I’m glad I chose to grow up, handle it like a man and face the responsibility. But it got frustrating when I failed, and didn’t do what the coaches wanted me to do.

“One thing I learned is that you have to deal with things in a positive way. Coach Hawking has a lot of different quotes, and he always came up with one to help me. No matter how things are going, you have to find the positive things, build on them and still learn from the negatives. I tried to do that.”

Harmon, who majors in kinesiology and health promotion, says it has carried over into the classroom. “There are times when I get down about something that happens in school, but that’s when I try to dig down deeper,” he said. “I feel positive about what I’ve done so far.”

So do the Titan coaches.

“As far as I’m concerned, Ike has shattered the Prop. 48 myth,” Hawking said. “He’s done well academically for the last two years. More and more, people are recognizing that test scores don’t always show everything. I’m confident Ike is going to get a degree here.”

Harmon would like to be able to do it in four years. It would be his way of delivering a tomahawk dunk to the idea that Prop. 48 athletes don’t make it.

“I studied for the [Scholastic Assessment Test], but there were things there that I’d never seen before, or since,” Harmon said. “I just know I had never been good at taking tests. I think any time anyone said the word ‘exam’ or ‘test’, I’d get brain freeze. I guess I was intimidated. But let me write a paper about something and I do fine.”

But Harmon says he does regret not putting in more effort at Santa Ana Valley High.

“I’d sit in the classroom and I’d just be thinking about basketball,” Harmon said. “I had the best help there anyone could have from my counselor and other people. My counselor there helped me a lot, but I didn’t take advantage of it.”

The counselor, Lynne Kramer, director of the college prep program at the school, says she’s happy Harmon made the commitment to enroll, despite having to do it under the Prop. 48 program. “He could have given up, but he chose to do what he had to do to become eligible,” she said.

Noticed Early

Harmon began attracting attention when he was only a sixth grader at Spurgeon Intermediate School. He played two years at Century High, then transferred to Valley High as a junior.

As a senior, Harmon averaged 22 points a game and led Orange County players in rebounding with an 11.2 average. The other star of that team was 6-foot-4 point guard Olujimi Mann. Mann originally committed to UCLA but never played there.

Like Harmon, Mann also failed to qualify. Mann has attempted to play at several community colleges in the last two years, but has not played at any of them. He is planning to play at Santa Ana College this season.

While several major colleges were recruiting Mann, Fullerton focused on Harmon.

Harmon also considered Hawaii, but Fullerton’s biggest advantage was that Harmon wanted to stay close to home.

“Fullerton was on Ike right from the start,” Valley High Coach Kevin Stipp said. “They really wanted him, and I think that meant a lot to Ike. And they still really wanted him after he didn’t qualify.”

Harmon had a good senior season, then dominated the Southern California Summer All-Star Classic at Long Beach State with 30 points, 10 rebounds and three blocked shots.

“I think I probably opened some people’s eyes,” Harmon said. “Several coaches told me they were sorry they didn’t recruit me harder. But I felt comfortable at Fullerton.”

Harmon went from that emotional high to the letdown of having to sit out his freshman year.

“It was really hard for me to watch my team playing while I had to sit in the stands,” said Harmon, who also couldn’t practice with the team.

Harmon worked out at Valley High, and helped Stipp occasionally by working with the younger players. “You could tell how much he was missing it,” Stipp said.

There were some quiet overtures about a possible transfer, but Harmon stayed firm with Fullerton. He needed to pass 24 units as a freshman to be eligible as a sophomore, and passed 29.

“Sitting out was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Harmon said. “I felt like I’d had my identity taken away.”

But Harmon said he learned a lot in the process. “When something needs to be done now, I do it,” he said. “I don’t procrastinate. I did that in high school.”

Help Is Appreciated

It’s important to Harmon to not disappoint his family, or others who have helped helped him: people such as Stipp, Kramer and also Juanita Stocker.

Stocker gave Harmon a summer job in her group home, and also has encouraged him. “She would always say to never let anyone tell you can’t do something,” Harmon said. “Having people like that care about you makes you feel a lot better.”

Harmon is the youngest of eight children. His only brother, Thomas, two years older, played at Century High for four years, averaging 18 points on a 23-5 team as a senior.

Four inches shorter than Ike, Thomas went to Southern California College on a scholarship but redshirted as a freshman. He transferred to Norfolk (Va.) State, then later tried unsuccessfully to make the Old Dominion team as a walk-on.

“He’s back home now working,” Harmon said. “He’s married and has a child, so life has changed for him. He was an inspiration to me, and helped me a lot just by talking to me and keeping my head straight when I was younger.”

Harmon grew up in an area of Santa Ana where success does not come easily. There, he said, “I’ve seen people do things the right way and the wrong way.”

One of his heroes growing up was Bobby Joyce.

“I went to the same junior high school he did, and I even wore his number there,” Harmon said. “They compared me to him, and I wanted to be just like him. But I watched him go the wrong way, and not take advantage of the opportunity he had.”

Joyce, considered one of the nation’s top prospects when he was a junior at Santa Ana High, played one season at Riverside Community College, then transferred to Nevada Las Vegas. He was on the bench at UNLV for one season before quitting the team in 1992 for what was described as personal reasons.

Two years later, Joyce was arrested in Las Vegas for battery and robbery, and has since dropped out of sight.

“There are a lot of stories like that,” Stipp said. “Ike has told me several times how he wants to be certain he does something with his life. He doesn’t want to be just another player who flops.”

Not just another playground legend.