This basketball season, the Senators are in for a surprise. Ty Pace, an 8th grader from Sparkman Middle School is the newest addition to the boys basketball team.

Watching Pace from the ground up, basketball coach Jamie Coggins saw his potential from a young age and has kept up with him over the past few years.

“We’ve been watching him grow. His dad played for Sparkman. We would go to the middle school and watch his 7th grade games. We look at Sparkman and Monrovia as the kids we are trying to develop and want to get ready to play high school basketball,” Coggins said.

Coggins says Pace had talent that made him stand out from other players. He first decided to put him on the boys freshman team but later he realized that Pace was experiencing growth and felt as if it was time to move him up.

“Back in the summertime, we brought him in to play with the freshman team. Working out with us and evaluating him, we got to see the progress he had made,” Coggins said. “When we brought him into camp, Ty had a lot of good practices. We noticed that everyday in the consistency and how he was playing the game.”

With this being the first time Coggins has had an 8th grader bumped up to varsity, it has been a new experience for everyone, coaches and players included.

“This is a new experience for us also when trying to develop him at the varsity level to teach him and coach him about the 7A level varsity play.” Coggins said.

From the beginning, Pace knew that he was ready to advance and get the varsity experience but with this advance came sacrifices. He had to stop playing for the freshman team however, for him this was just another great opportunity. Even with being the youngest player, Pace does not feel any pressure when playing varsity.

“I wanted to go ahead and get the experience and challenge myself. I have helped score points and make some great plays to my teammates,” Pace said. “I feel blessed with the experience and opportunity. Basketball is just basketball no matter what so if you know how to play it’s never pressure.”

Pace says that being on varsity has improved his skills due to more team workouts and practices. He sees himself continuing to improve day by day.

“Playing against guys older has helped me improve my skill by pushing me to find different ways to score over them and also having to play defense against guys stronger so it’s made me more physical,” Pace said.