After Connor Branch finished his four-day tryout for the Carleton Ravens men’s basketball team this past July, he admitted he was crippled by doubt because he thought there was no way he could earn a spot on the team.
As a result, no one was more shocked than Branch himself when Carleton head coach Dave Smart promptly welcomed the six-foot-nine forward from Calgary to the team after the tryout.
“Afterwards, [Smart] just told me, ‘We’d love to have you on the team, but know that you’ll have to work your way up,’” Branch said.
Luckily, Branch already knows what it’s like to work his way up.
With multiple injuries regularly keeping him off the court during his high school basketball career, Branch said he had to work harder than most to make up for all of the lost playing time.
At the age of 13, Branch was already six-foot-seven and said he faced a lot of nagging knee injuries throughout his entire childhood.
Just when Branch was starting to grow into his body, he said a biking accident caused him to tear his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), medial cruciate ligament (MCL), and lateral meniscus.
Branch said his injures were initially misdiagnosed as sprains—it wasn’t until several months later that he realized the severity of his knee’s condition, which required an ACL reconstruction.
He underwent surgery just before his Grade 11 year, which he said prevented him from playing for most of the season, including a tournament where his team was named the Alberta provincial champion.
Branch said that marked the beginning of his efforts to recover quickly to get back into the game, as his extra motivation allowed him to push himself to shed off the extra weight he gained from being immobile after surgery, as well as starting an intensive strength training regimen.
Although his knee was fully recovered by his final year of high school, he said his skills still had some tuning up to do.
“Because of the injuries, I didn’t want to go to university right away,” he said. “I didn’t have very many offers out of high school, either, because my skill level wasn’t very high.”
But that changed quickly.
After spending the 2013-14 year training in his hometown while coaching his old high school’s basketball team, Branch took off to North Carolina for two months in the spring to further his training.
At this point, Branch said he had offers flowing in from several universities in Alberta, as well as some top-tier National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) schools, like Tulane, Maryland, and Miami.
He admitted that he was taken aback by the positive response he got from universities across North America, since he hadn’t actually played with anyone since high school and even he didn’t completely know what he was athletically capable of doing.
In the midst of the summer recruitment frenzy, Branch said he took a friend’s suggestion and contacted Smart to inquire about a tryout for the Ravens.
“He struck me differently than any other coach just with his honesty and how straight-up he is,” Branch said. “When he told me he’d love to have me on the team, he also said, ‘I think you can be a really good player, but also you could be a terrible player. It depends on how hard you work.’”
After Branch practiced with the team for the first time, he said he couldn’t help but strongly admire the team’s work ethic and talent.
“No one really feels entitled. No one feels like they should be given anything, but rather, that it should be earned,” Branch said of the Ravens’ work ethic.
Due to his time recovering from injuries and away from the game the Calgary forward said he expects to redshirt his first year at Carleton—which means he will be able to practice and train with the team this season, but is not allowed to play in any actual games to avoid losing a year of his Canadian Interuniversity Sport eligibility.
Branch said he hopes to grow with the team and get to the level of understanding of the game that the rest of the team has developed.
“It was so weird to start from this small town in Alberta and then having it snowball into all of this,” he said. “I’ll be working my butt off, and in the coming years, I hope to be one of Carleton’s main guys.”
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