Brent Harris didn’t want Anthony Sharp to become complacent.
With multi-sport standouts Landon Ellis and Tyler Jones set to graduate from Victory Christian Academy, Harris knew no other way to get his point across to Sharp than to challenge the rising sophomore.
“I said, ‘Son, do you want to be the best player at Victory Christian, or do you want to be the best player in the state of Mississippi,’ ” said Harris, who is the coach of the school’s boys basketball and baseball teams. “I said, ‘The best player at Victory Christian, you’re not going to push yourself. But I said if your goal is to be the best player in the state of Mississippi, you got something to work at.’ From that point on, he just took off. He found the weights. He asked questions. … He went from a 10th-grader who could barely touch the rim and now he is a senior who can do 360-(degree dunks) at 6-foot tall. He just took off.”
Sharp’s maturation as a standout in football, boys basketball, and baseball helped him earn numerous honors and left him with options to play any of the sports in college. On Monday, Sharp opted for the best offer when he signed an athletic scholarship to play basketball at Blue Mountain College, a NAIA Division I school in Blue Mountain, less than 20 miles north of New Albany.
Sharp recalled the conversation — one of many he said he has had with Harris — on his signing day and that he “took it to heart” to help him realize his goals.
“I didn’t just want to be the best around here,” Sharp said. “A lot of people say that (Victory Christian) is a small school, but I wanted to be the best around here. He really helped me out with workouts and kept me striving to be the best. Landon Ellis also helped me. He worked out with me a lot. They are the two of my biggest role models as far as sports.”
Sharp, a 6-foot guard, averaged 21.9 points per game (19 games) this past season for the Eagles, who lost to First Assembly Christian in the Alabama Christian Athletic Association tournament semifinals. He also led the team in scoring as a junior (20.9) and as a sophomore (19.8).
Harris said Sharp has reached this point because he has excelled on and off the court and he is a “better kid than an athlete.” He said he has coached Sharp since the seventh grade, so he is “like my child.” In that time, Harris said he learned Sharp’s work ethic knew no limits. Whether it was Sharp staying late to take extra batting practice or going to the gym to work on his shooting, Harris eventually discovered the best option was to make Sharp a key so he could come and go as he pleased and satisfy his desire to work at his skills.
“He just works so hard at everything,” Harris said. “He gets straight As, and you can ask any one of these teachers. He is just a pleasure.”
Harris said Sharp realized at the end of his ninth-grade year he would have to be a leader. He said Sharp accepted the message behind his words, and while he might not have changed into a “rah-rah vocal guy,” he showed his peers what to do and how to work hard to be their best. As a result, Harris said everyone fell in.
“He could have went to New Hope, Columbus Caledonia, any of those bigger schools, and he steps right on the field and plays all three sports,” Harris said. “I knew he was grounded here and he loved this school. I wanted to push him and make him a better athlete, not someone who was satisfied with what he already had.
“He understood and realized I have to go now. I think it took until midway through his 10th-grade year that I have got to do this. It was a good talk at a good time in his young career. Sometimes I do the right thing.”
Blue Mountain assistant men’s basketball coach Jermael Bingham said he and head coach J.D. Foster received an email from Sharp that had a video link. He said they knew they wanted to have Sharp join their program as soon as they watched the video.
Bingham said the coaching staff also asked Sharp to attend a tryout with about 50 players from throughout the state at the school to verify what they had seen on the video.
“People said he is a gym rat and they can’t get him out of the gym,” Bingham said. “That is what we love at Blue Mountain. We like to keep our guys in the gym all day long if they want to. We never shut down the gym.”
Bingham said Sharp projects as a “combo guard” who might be able to play small forward. He said he is anxious to see how much Sharp can improve when he focuses on basketball.
Playing one sport might be an adjustment for Sharp, who hit .500 and was a standout pitcher on the school’s baseball team that won its second-straight ACAA title last weekend. Sharp also scored all six of his team’s touchdowns in a 44-8 win against Tuscaloosa Christian in the Christian Football Association championship in the fall. The effort helped Sharp earn CFA Offensive Player of the Year honors. He later shared The Dispatch’s Small Schools Football Player of the Year.
“I think Anthony has earned this opportunity,” Victory Christian Athletic Director/Headmaster/football coach Chris Hamm said. “I am extremely proud for him because he has worked. I can’t tell you when he set this goal, but he wanted to go play something somewhere, and he has worked hard.”
Sharp said the belief his coaches showed in him helped him realize he could accomplish any goal. That’s why playing sports at a small school like Victory Christian never stopped him from working toward the next step. He said he loves basketball and feels Blue Mountain College is the perfect fit for sports and for academics. He believes it also is the right place to focus his work ethic on helping him become the best college student-athlete he can be.
“It is really just the desire to be the best,” Sharp said. “Like coach Brent told me that time, you want to try to be the best around. That is kind of the mind-set you have to have if you want to be really successful. It is not always a good thing, but when I step out to compete, I always think I am the best. It really helps you out. Not to be arrogant or cocky, but in a competitive way you need to feel like you are the best. Working as hard as I do, it really helped me to believe that in my mind.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 37 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.