HIGH SCHOOLS – SUCCESS NOT FOREIGN TO CONWELL-EGAN BASKETBALL PLAYER GYOKCHYAN
By Ted Silary

Philadelphia Daily News
ol/pennsylvania/20080213_High_Schools_-_Success_no t_foreign_to_Conwell-Egan_basketball_player_Gyokch yan.html
Feb 13 2008
PA

HE WAS BORN in Armenia, reared in Lebanon and arrived in Fairless
Hills, Bucks County, after a pit stop in China.

Yes, the stories Hayk Gyokchyan can tell are a shade more involved
than your average Catholic League athlete’s.

Gyokchyan, a 6-8, 200-pound senior forward who’s here on a student
visa, just completed his second season of basketball at Conwell-Egan
High.

Aside from earning the Northern Division scoring championship with
a 17.3 average, the Beast from the Middle East, as C-E coach Rick
Sabol affectionately calls him, also posted norms of 12 rebounds,
three blocks and two steals.

Schools such as Bloomsburg, Franklin & Marshall, Cabrini and
Gwynedd-Mercy are in hot pursuit, but Division I Lehigh is sniffing
and a visit is scheduled for later this month to Arkansas-Pine Bluff,
a member of the Southwest Athletic Conference.

Grades? Hayk Gyokchyan (hike gee-oak-shun; the "gee" rhymes with
"key") does straight-A classroom work.

"My parents would pretty much kill me if I didn’t," he quipped.

Personality? Baseball coach Rich Papirio, one of his teachers,
describes Gyokchyan as "a delight to be around. What a great addition
he’s been to our school."

The proper perspective?

"When the talk was starting that maybe I could come to America,
I thought I was dreaming," Gyokchyan said. "I didn’t think it would
happen. It just seemed like everything would be too complicated. But
then it worked out and I’m having a great experience.

"Pretty much everyone has been nice to me and my host family could
not be better."

Gyokchyan lives with the Golins, Mark and Michele. Their son, Ryan,
last fall tied the city record for one-game receptions, with 15,
but then tore his ACL and that injury has kept him out all basketball
season, as well. Another son, Dustin, is a quarterback for C-E.

Hayk’s sporting interests begin and end with hoops. No wonder. His
father, Tigran, was an all-time player in Lebanon and is now an
assistant coach with that country’s top pro squad.

"That was why we moved to Lebanon; my father signed to play there,"
Gyokchyan said. "I loved growing up around basketball. I was always
at my dad’s practices and games."

Gyokchyan mentioned that there’s no such thing as high school ball
in Lebanon.

"The pro teams sponsor age-group teams and that’s how you learn the
game," he said. "And everyone plays with a 24-second clock, so you
get used to a run-and-gun style with a lot less defense.

"It was hard to get used to the slower style played here, but I got
it done and I appreciate that my coaches accommodated my skills so
I could mostly play the way I was used to."

Questions. We have questions.

How did he wind up here?

"My father has a friend in this area. I’m not even sure it’s a
basketball friend."

Did he know much English beforehand?

"We had English from kindergarten on up. It got to be pretty advanced,
too. But you only speak it in class, really. It took me about a week
to get used to speaking all English here, but then I was fine. The
key is to think in English."

How difficult is it to be away from his family?

"I thought it would be really hard. But I adjusted in about a week to
that, too. Between basketball and school, there were so many things
to worry about and keep me busy. I text or e-mail my family every
day and talk to them four, five times a week. You just get used to it."

Has he been home since arriving here?

"No. But my parents [mom is Anahit] came here for about a half-month
last summer, and that was nice."

Hayk then mentioned that his sister, Narine, is a shade under 6-2
though she’s only 13 years old. Yes, she plays basketball. Might she
also wind up at C-E?

"As good as our girls’ program is, sure. I could see it."

How dangerous was life in Lebanon?

"We lived outside Beirut. The bombings targeted a specific group of
people that lived maybe 3, 4 miles from our house. But there was a car
bomb targeting the former prime minister and there were [numerous]
casualties and that happened only about a half-mile from my school,
so that was pretty scary."

Sabol, C-E’s first-year head coach, called Gyokchyan "a very good
player that listens and would do whatever it takes for us to win."

He added, "He was really playing out of position. He is more of a
face-up forward that can score both inside and outside, with both
hands, but we needed him to play predominantly inside. He worked very
hard this past offseason on his post offense. He also became a much
better defender as the season went on."

Gyokchyan said he’s been told that C-E administrators will help
him with the process of having his student visa extended through
2012. He intends to major in business administration with leanings,
not surprisingly, to the international aspect.

Gyokchyan enrolled at C-E in mid-October, 2006.

Here’s the reason:

That summer, he was a member of Lebanon’s Junior National Team and his
dad was one of the coaches. The squad traveled to China in September
to compete for the Asian championship and wound up earning one of
three spots for the World tournament, in Serbia. There was a time lag,
though. The Worlds weren’t held until last summer.

A world event? Wow, that must have been fun.

"I didn’t go," Hayk Gyokchyan said. "I was playing in the AAU national
tournament."

Ah, the American way. *