By Carter Conroy
The Cornell boys’ basketball team includes five seniors, three of whom have been a major part of the core of the Cornell basketball program since their freshman year.
Kaden Divito, Isaiah Langston, Zaier Harrison, Blaine Sams, and Je’avontae King are all in their final year of high school basketball and have helped lead their team to the semifinals of the 2019-20 WPIAL Class 1-A playoffs.
Three of these seniors, (Divito, Langston, and Harrison) have been starters since their freshman year.
Head coach William Sacco said, “I don’t think many coaches have an opportunity to go with ninth graders all the way through their program, it’s pretty nice when it does happen.”
Coach Sacco stated that he and his coaches knew that they were, “in for something special,” when the then trio of freshmen helped the Raiders win 18 games in their first year as starters.
He said that some of his favorite moments came in that first year for the trio as he felt “a lot of people took us for granted because they thought, ‘oh this team’s pretty young.’ But I’ll tell you what, these kids could play, even back then.”
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Isaiah Langston talked about how in the first year, “Coach Sacco was a little uptight, he wanted to really push us to be really play-oriented. He wanted to get a feel for how we play and how he coaches, but, over the years we’ve started to work off of each other, so that’s helped out a lot.”
Kaden Divito also talked about how the trio “changed the culture” when they came in their first year. He mentioned that the Cornell boys’ basketball team had missed the playoffs in the prior couple of years and then, when the trio stepped in they, “went to the playoffs, won the first playoff game in a couple of years, made it to the quarterfinals and lost to a better team. But, we’ve improved since then; ever since then, us three, added on with a couple other guys that joined the team and we’ve just been improving, and ever since our freshman year we’ve just gotten better and better each year.”
Blaine Sams has also been a part of the team since that freshman year, he just has not been a starter for all four years. Je’avontae King came onto the team during his sophomore year but said that, “they’ve shown a good brotherly bond since I came here.”
This Cornell team is focused on finishing off a strong season and a remarkable career for these seniors.
Coach Sacco said that Divito, Langston, and Harrison are now all 1,000 point scorers for the school, “all on the same team, all in the same class, it’s just unheard of, you don’t hear of that. Not many teams share the ball enough so everybody gets the chance to score, these guys do, they like to share the ball.”
Zaier Harrison talked about the valuable experience that came from losing in the playoffs last season, he said, “that helped us grow a lot, because we didn’t expect to lose and that humbled us down a lot and we came to work hard this year.”
Almost all of the seniors talked about beating conference rival Vincentian Academy each of the last two years as one of their favorite moments during their high school careers.
A couple of the seniors also said that, just playing with the guys has been their favorite part of their high school career. Divito said that, “it’s just been a fun ride throughout the last four years and I wouldn’t want to play with anybody else.”
Some of the seniors will be continuing to play basketball at the college level next year. Kaden Divito recently committed to play basketball at Washington and Jefferson College. Isaiah Langston has been talking with Washington and Jefferson and Slippery Rock University. Zaier Harrison will be playing football for Washington and Jefferson and Je’avontae King is hoping to play basketball at Slippery Rock as well.
The Raiders’ mindset going into the rest of the playoffs is to “practice every day like it’s your last,” because, “tomorrow isn’t promised.” Kaden Divito emphasized that every playoff game, “could be our last ever game playing high school so you got to make the most of it.”
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