With the basketball season coming up soon, there are many players who play a key role on either JV or Varsity.

One of them, Ian McCaw, a sophomore who stands at 6’6” at age 16, is a tremendous basketball player who plays the center position for South.

McCaw started playing basketball when he was nine years old in the third grade in a league, but when he was 11, he started playing for a travel team. After that, he escalated and started playing AAU Now, he is on the south team.

One of the main things that inspired McCaw to start playing was his parents and sisters, not his height. He said, “All of my sisters played basketball when growing up and my parents helped them, so naturally I grew up and started playing as well because of the influences around me.”

McCaw’s favorite moment playing basketball was when he was in the seventh grade, when he hit a game-tying shot to send the game to overtime. They eventually won in the end because of his scoring output off 31 points.

McCaw loves playing basketball inside and outside of school and his favorite part of the sport is winning and the competitiveness. He also loves the sport when just playing for fun, but he loves building relationships with players.

Reminiscing, he asserted, “My favorite part of the game is when you can win by getting everyone in the game and all score because it’s just fun to have good chemistry with your teammates.”

Outside of basketball, McCaw loves to do other things around the school.

McCaw is also a part of chorus and even in a select group, the men’s ensemble. He also wants to get more involved in more sports, saying, “I think I will be trying out for the men’s volleyball team.”

McCaw’s schedule is usually filled up with basketball things like practice and games, so it is very hard for him to do everything like keeping up good grades.

When asked how he maintains his schedule, he said, “A lot of it is my parents because they are always driving me to everything and helping me be organized, but I just do my homework whenever I can and sometimes it keeps me up until midnight.”

McCaw is always very busy with basketball before the season even starts.

In the fall, McCaw tries to go to every open gym on Mondays and Thursdays, but in the season he said, “I have no time at all, I have a practice or game every weekday and Saturday morning, and practices are from five to six every time after school.”

To McCaw, being a South athlete is the community and how everyone around you wants to help.

He said that “all of the coaches and trainers care and want to help you, and there is this feeling that there is people behind you who believe you can do better and work harder than ever before.”

Other than doing things at school, McCaw likes to hang out with his friends and go to Valley Square. His favorite artists are Frank Ocean and Drake. He is even going to a Two Door Cinema Club concert in November.

McCaw also has thought about some colleges and jobs. One thing McCaw would love to do is engineering because  “math just comes easy to [him].”

The colleges that McCaw said he’s interested in going to are Penn State because his sisters have all went there or Lehigh because it’s a good engineering school.

McCaw is also a very caring person.

One person he looks up to is former president John F. Kennedy. McCaw looks up to former President Kennedy because he loved to give back to our country and made it such a better place.

One of his favorite quotes from Kennedy was when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

McCaw loves this quote because it shows how much you can give to your community, and he has certainly followed suit with South’s basketball team.