There’s Just No Quit in Kenroy

It was late in Cal State Fullerton’s basketball game at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in January.

The Titans were being blitzed by the Mustangs, but during a timeout, point guard Kenroy Jarrett looked from one teammate to another. “We’re not going to quit,” Jarrett told each of them. “We’re not going to quit.”

Fullerton Coach Bob Hawking remembered it well. “That’s the kind of player he is,” Hawking said. “There’s no quit in Kenroy.”

Jarrett illustrated the point again two games later, when he broke his right hand in the first half of the Titans’ game at UC Irvine. Despite the injury, he played 34 minutes, many of those in pain.

A few days later, Jarrett was told by the team doctor his season was over. However, a week later the swelling had subsided, and Jarrett pushed for a second opinion from a different doctor, who cleared him to play.

Jarrett returned after missing only two games and played the last five games of the season with the metacarpal bone broken but his hand tightly wrapped.

The Titans begin a new season Friday night at Simon Fraser in Burnaby, B.C., and Hawking is happy to have Jarrett, a fifth-year senior, along for one more ride.

Jarrett has played in 79 games, starting 42 of them, in three seasons. He led the Titans in minutes played last season, averaging 37, and averaged 9.7 points.

He missed the 1996-97 season because of a knee injury that required surgery.

Even then, Jarrett was running up and down stadium steps only three weeks after the surgery. He returned to practice six weeks later, determined to come back as soon as possible.

It was typical Jarrett.

“Kenroy has a such a great attitude about everything,” Hawking said. “He’s the kind of guy who always sees the glass half-full, and he’s a real breath of fresh air in our environment.”

Jarrett has his own philosophy about positive thinking.

“If you say something negatively just one time, there’s a good chance it will become reality,” he said.

It’s an attitude Jarrett says he learned from his mother, Virginia, who reared him along with two brothers and two sisters in Twentynine Palms, a desert community north of Palm Springs.

“She took everything that happened and turned it into something positive,” Jarrett said. “I’d tell her about a problem or a dilemma and she would always come up with something positive about it.”

When Jarrett had to miss his sophomore season after he was injured in a preseason practice, he immediately found a silver lining.

“I decided that it was maybe God telling me that I needed to get to work on my grades,” Jarrett said. “My first year in school, it was hard for me to study when I was so tired from basketball. I would get so intense in practice. But I think I’ve learned how to focus now when I’m tired, and it’s helped me.”

Another lesson from his mother, Jarrett said.

“She’s an amazing woman,” he said. “She worked [as a nurse’s assistant] at a convalescent home in Twentynine Palms, and she had to work hard to raise us. She has rheumatoid arthritis pretty bad, but I never heard her complain about it, and it never kept her from working.”

Jarrett’s mother, who now lives in Lancaster, said she’s proud of what he has accomplished. “He always said he was going to be a famous basketball player,” she said. “And he’s been a perfect son, always cheerful and friendly.”

Jarrett’s parents separated when he was 11 and the family was living in Brooklyn, N.Y.

“My father didn’t see any good coming from sports,” Jarrett said. “He has an auto repair shop, and he wanted me to go to a trade school so I’d be able to work with him in the business. My father wasn’t a bad person. He was just stubborn in his ways, and he didn’t listen to what I wanted.”

Jarrett was a standout for three years at Twentynine Palms High, where he averaged 22.8 points as a senior.

“My high school coach [Reese Troublefield] would never let me accept failure,” Jarrett said. “I guess he saw something in me because he was constantly feeding me positive energy.”

Jarrett is pleased at his improvement in four years with the Titans.

“I’ve learned a lot about the game and all the little things,” he said. “Things such as when to speed up the game and when to slow it down, and recognizing when matchups are to our advantage. There are a lot of things like that.”

Hawking is pleased by how much Jarrett has matured on and off the court.

“He was such a dominant athlete at Twentynine Palms that he didn’t have to think [about] the game,” Hawking said. “Now he really understands it and appreciates all the nuances of running the team as our point guard.”

Hawking says Jarrett is also a good teacher.

“He’s worked in our camps during the summer and he’s really popular with young kids,” Hawking said. “I think he has all the talents to become an outstanding coach, if that’s what he wants to do.”

Jarrett and his wife, Vanessa, have two daughters of their own, Mikalya, 3, and Shaylissa, 2.

“We met four years ago when we both started school at Fullerton,” Vanessa said. “I guess the thing that attracted me to Kenroy is the same thing everyone likes about him. I feel very blessed that he came into my life. He never uses anything as an excuse, and he has that never-give-up attitude about everything.”

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