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Player Diary: Paul Bayer of Moline High School
Paul Bayer Moline High School Special To ChicagoHoops.com August 30, 2004 Email Questions/Comments To brian@chicagohoops.com Paul Bayer of Moline High School brings the first installment of his Player Diary to ChicagoHoops.com. Paul ranks as one of the top Class of 2006 prospects in the state of Illinois. Follow along as Paul gives us an inside look at his recruitment, and his life both on and off of the basketball court. What’s up everyone . . . This is Paul Bayer from Moline, IL (along the banks of the Mississippi about 150 miles west of Chicago). This is my first time writing for the Player’s Diary and it’s pretty cool to be able to do this. I am a 2006 Player for Moline HS. It’s great to be a player from Illinois, and an honor to be mentioned on recruiting lists with some of the great 2006 Illinois Players. 2004 has been a memorable year with the highlight playing with my Moline HS Team at the Class AA Elite 8 in Peoria. Before I talk about this year, and my summer, I want to mention some huge changes that took place in my life the past two years. I was born in Macomb, IL back in 1987 and my family moved to Taylor Ridge, IL in 1995. I attended the Rockridge School District (Class A School 15 miles southwest of the Quad Cities) through 8th grade. I enjoyed it there and had a lot of success in basketball and baseball. Two years ago my parents decided we were going to move to Moline. This meant that I went from a High School of 450, to a high school of 2450. I knew Moline well because my grandparents live there, and my church and youth group is in Moline, but it was a big step. I knew that Moline had a great basketball program, and I was looking forward to playing on the Sophomore team, and hoping to get a Varsity jersey by the end of the season. However, things went better than expected, and I made the Varsity right off of the bat. Some of you might have played in Wharton Fieldhouse, and know it is one of the best places anywhere to play basketball. We get 4000-5000 people for some of our big WB6 Conference games! I was pretty glad as I realized that I was going to get to play Varsity there for 4 years. I am very thankful to Coach Dexter and how he showed confidence in me. Beyond giving me the opportunity to play, coach has also taught me to be mentally tough. That year, we ended up with a 20-win season, and won the Western Big Six Conference Championship. We also won our Regional, but got beat in the Sectional at Dekalb. But now back to this year. It was quite a season. We won the Western Big Six again, and this time we went 10-0. (I had my best Conference game at Rock Island when we won our 10th, and I scored 19 points and had 8 rebounds). We went on to win our Regional at Rock Island the next week (I had 2 of the biggest 3’s in my life in the last 2 minutes of the game). Then we won our Sectional at home against Rockford Boylan and won the Supersectional at Rockford against Prairie Ridge. I had my best post-season game as I led our team in scoring against Prairie Ridge with 17 points. It was the greatest feeling after the game knowing that we were going to State and get to play in Peoria that weekend. We headed to Peoria with a 28-2 record and faced a powerhouse team in Homewood-Flossmor with Julian Wright. Unfortunately our season came to an end. We showed that we could compete as we gave them a great game and lost by only 7 points after leading part way through the third quarter. It was a dream come true to get to play there and to know that we have a chance to get back there again in the next couple of years. I pitched for the Moline Varsity Team this spring and missed out on some spring AAU Events. I went into summer feeling kind of behind, but I caught up in June. I attended the Iowa Elite Camp, and the Illinois Elite Camp. I enjoyed the 2 days at Iowa City, and it was fun to be at Ubben, and play with some other top 2006 Players like Devan Bawinkel, Will Walker and Willie Veasley. The highlight was getting to play against the Illini returning starters that afternoon. I hit a 3 on Roger Powell right off the bat and he went back and knocked one down on me (He said he had to get me back!) I played at the Northern Illinois Team Camp, and the IBCA Shootout with my Moline teammates, and did real well at both of those events. I had a couple of games at each with 30+ points. July brought two big events with the 17U Illinois Gunners. We played at the Hoosier Shootout and won our Pool. I had games of 25, 21 and 19. We lost the first round of championship play to Full Package in a close game. (They went on the finish in the Final Four so we felt pretty good) As the Tourney went on, I developed an ankle problem that carried on through the rest of July. Our Gunners team headed to Las Vegas to play in the Reebok Big Time Tourney. It was my second year to get to play there and it was a lot of fun. We won our first two pool games against a New Mexico team, and a California Team. I had 19 points and 11 rebounds in the first game, but my ankle started to act up again, and I was limited as the week went on. We ended up 2-1 in Pool Play and made the “A” Tourney. I started each game, but could only go for 5-6 minutes. Then I went back in for the start of the second half and played until I couldn’t go anymore. We were really happy with our performance there as we made to the Elite 8 of the “A” Tournament and got to play into Sunday night. Down the stretch, I was fortunate to still have a couple of 15 point games with my limited mobility. I am going through rehab on my ankle (the MRI showed no tear) and I am hoping to be released from the doctor by September 8th. I know this has gone long, and I’ll wrap it up for this time. I am excited for this season coming up at Moline. I have been lifting upper body 5 times a week for the past 2 weeks. I want to get a lot stronger before the season and work to improve my ball handling skills. I was excited to climb on the scales at my sports physical a week ago, and I found out that I have grown an inch since spring and am now 6’4 ½ “ without shoes. I am presently hearing from about 25 Division 1 programs, about half high major and half mid major. Many of the 25 programs are talking regularly to Coach Dexter and 8 are sending hand-written notes beyond the many letters. My postman is a big basketball fan and he’s getting a kick out of all the letters. It’s an exciting time for me, but I know I have a whole lot of work to do. That’s it for now. (I’ll make the next one shorter) God Bless, Paul Bayer Moline High School |
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