Former PCC basketball star messed around with COVID and got a triple double
By Kevin Seavers
Former PCC star point guard Rasheet Wilson steps into his new basketball practice facility in Colby, Kansas. On his very first day at practice, he was put through a full workout. He knew there was something wrong when he started foaming at the mouth.
“I was throwing up,” Wilson said. “I was spitting up. I was like a rabid dog. I couldn’t shoot. My body ached. I was running down for a catch and shoot, and I couldn’t do it.”
The talented scorer had just gotten off of a plane from California to Denver. The train drove him from Denver to Kansas. The Florida native knew his body felt bleak, but he thought he was shivering because he wasn’t accustomed to the low temperatures. At one point on the train he was curled up in the fetal position in his jacket, overcoat, sweatpants, and tights.
“I ordered a lasagna from Pizza Hut, and there’s really a potent smell,” Wilson said. “I put my nose in the pasta. I could not smell it. I couldn’t taste it. I don’t know how to explain it. I had a big thing of orange juice, and I’m drinking it. I couldn’t taste anything. I squeezed an orange, and I couldn’t smell it. I was cold all the time. I had the heater on at 85 [degrees], and I was still cold, even though I was wrapped up in a blanket.”
Getting an opportunity to play basketball again meant moving, but Wilson wasn’t too discouraged by COVID. In fact, he thought COVID was “bullshit” until he arrived at Colby Community College.
“At one point in time, the entire team got COVID,” Wilson said. “I was the first one with it. I think I brought it to everyone from California. I was the first one with it, and I didn’t know I had it. But I never really paid attention to the symptoms. Because I thought COVID was bullshit. So, I’m like, you know what, whatever.”
It was too late for his brand new coaches and teammates that he had just met 24 hours ago. The virus had already made its rounds, jumping from one teammate to the next. Things got much worse when his coach was placed in the hospital on an oxygen mask. Out of the entire team, coaches, and staff, Anthony Marshall was the only one to avoid it.
Wilson was their very first known case, so Colby wasn’t really aware of the protocols. They were supposed to ease him into it practice. But the athletics department wasn’t the only section of the school that struggled with the new normal. Even the professors and administrators at the school didn’t know what to make of the issue.
“I have English class Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Wilson said. “I missed 15 classes of English because of quarantine. I had to quarantine for two weeks, once I got to the school, I had to quarantine another two weeks once they found out I had COVID. They thought we were just making it up. I have a 3.4 GPA. I think I had mostly C’s this semester. I’ve never had grades so low in my life.”
This is what PCC was trying to avoid when they decided not to compete in sports. The risk, the uncertainty, and the liability. The virus was so bad that his teammate, AJ, missed 73 days, and developed an irregular heart beat because of COVID. Colby played 12 games in 2020, but AJ only played in 4 or 5 games.
Wilson could have sat, but the risk of not playing is what drove him to Colby in the first place. If Wilson doesn’t play, he won’t have any tape out there, so nobody will be looking at him as a transfer candidate. That meant no scholarships, no free education, and his aspirations would’ve been sidelined for another year. On top of that he’d be stuck in Pasadena, paying rent without a job due to COVID.
It’s not like Wilson was the only student-athlete who had those concerns or took those risks. As reported by CNBC, 47% of student-athletes said they believed that the cancellation of sports during the pandemic could put their college scholarship at risk. Many of those students have been playing sports all their lives, and to give up that dream now seemed asinine. Even the New York Times reported that over 6,600 student-athletes, coaches, and staff members reported positive cases during the pandemic.
The 6’3 point guard wasn’t always this heedless nor this outgoing. On December 23, 2015, Wilson was playing video games inside of his father’s house when he heard gunshots. He and his brother Davie were home for Christmas break. At the time, Wilson was attending Palm Beach State and his brother was enrolled at Missouri Valley, both on basketball scholarships. Wilson described his fathers place as a small white, 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom house with green shutters. He said it’s a good place to lay his head at, whenever he’s in Florida.
His bedroom is only five or six steps from the front door, but after hearing the gun shots, he waited about a minute or two before peeking through the front window. That’s when he saw his brother outside. He opened the front door, walked past the black fence with the key and past the second brown wooden fence where his brother laid in the bushes covered in blood.
“It was really the wrong place, wrong time,” Wilson said. “An altercation happened with his friend and some other guys, and they shot my brother in the head. His friend ran, and I ended up finding my brother bleeding out in the bushes in front of my house. It was really tough.”
Even though they attended separate schools, the two brothers shared the bond of basketball. They even shared birthday months, being a Friday away from each other. That night changed Wilson and he went from being outgoing to really sheltered and anti-social.
“I just totally quit basketball,” Wilson said. “I was in a deep funk and I couldn’t get out of it. I just woke up, played video games, sat in my room for hours and hours everyday, and came out of my room to eat. It was like that for 2 years. It was really bad. It was really bad at one point.”
And to this day, Wilson doesn’t celebrate Christmas or his birthday. That’s what the CCCAA, universities and colleges don’t consider when making decisions on not playing sports. They recruit prospects from across the country to attend their schools, but they seldom consider the emotional and physical journey, on the court and off, that student-athletes have to endure.
After 2 years of prayer, conversations with family members, and support by his prep coach, Wilson decided to play basketball again. But he still wanted to separate himself from his environment, so he decided to travel to the other side of the country to enroll at Chaffey College, a community college in Rancho Cucamonga. The coach at Chaffey didn’t think he was good enough, so he redshirted Wilson, and that’s how he landed in Pasadena.
At this point in his life, Wilson has become friends with the changes of scenery and uncertainty. He also has an uncanny ability to remain positive no matter the odds.
“I like to think of him as driven,” said former assistant coach of PCC Keith Hollimon. “That’s a nickname for him almost almost because he’s just relentless as to what he needs to be successful. So, basketball is what he’s been gifted with, but that’s not his talent. His talent is his ability to focus and his resolve.”
Under coaches Michael Swanegan and Keith Hollimon, Wilson was PCC’s leading scorer on the men’s basketball team in 2019. The West Palm Beach native was averaging 15.7 points per game and shooting 44.3% from the field. In Wilson’s mind, PCC had all the talent in the world, but injuries, eligibility, and abandonment became a problem moving forward. After starting off with a 9–5 record, they lost 6 straight games.
“I think we lost 7 people,” Wilson said. “Wow, now I’m thinking about it. We lost a kid named Jesse James. Kevin, Dominick to ineligibility, Anthony to a broken hand, a kid named Justin who was 6’9, a kid named Dillon who could shoot the lights out. He had a ruptured hernia.”
With all the losses and constant changes, Wilson still made All-Conference and had some votes for All-State, but the team regrettably finished the season with a 14–14 record. Still, Wilson had high aspirations for PCC. He found a job, was thinking about transferring to a Cal State, and matured in many ways.
“He’s a temperature changer,” Hollimon said. “If the room is 70 degrees on the thermostat, he’ll come in and change the temperature. If it needs to be colder or hotter, then that’s what he’ll do. Even in a team setting. So, that’s what I appreciated about him as well. He didn’t just come in and see dysfunction, and fix it rather than complaining about it.”
Coach Hollimon isn’t the only one who feels that way. Coach Gulick from Colby Community College held very similar sentiments.
“Rasheet is a great young man,” Gulick said. “He has the potential to do some outstanding things in life. Guys like him are why I coach. He is willing to listen, willing to hear the truth and he wants to win. He has tremendous character. Rasheet is the type of kid that I expect to be a very productive member of society. He has been through some unique forms of adversity in his life and every single time he comes out wiser and stronger. I am excited to see what he does in his life and I am looking forward to providing any amount of advice I can offer along his way.”
After Pasadena, Wilson became more education-oriented. He started having conversations with coach Swanegan and coach Hollimon.
“Spending time in their office, speaking to them,” Wilson said. “And they were like, ‘at this point, you’re a little bit older, you have to be real, you gotta get your education, you may have the possibility to play pro.’ I know guys who are still trying to play pro and they’re like 24 or 25 years old. I don’t want to be that. By the time I’m 24, I’ll be in the first year of my master’s program. I don’t want to be one of those guys who just sits around and says I’m going to go pro, I’m going to go pro. Realistically it’s not going to happen.”
Even though playing professionally isn’t his goal anymore, that doesn’t mean that Wilson has given up on basketball. He came to a very mature, but excruciating verdict that basketball would only help him further his education. Many athletes struggle with that decision — The decision whether or not it’s time to move and see the world differently than one had could have prognosticated while playing on the blacktops of Florida. Perhaps he could still break a few scoring records in between.
“I left Pasadena City College, and transferred to Colby Community College in northwest Kansas. I graduated from Colby a few days ago, and now I’m headed to the University of Pikeville in Kentucky” Wilson said in May.
Asked if Wilson would risk it and do it all over again and Wilson quickly responded,“It was worth the risk, 100%,” Wilson said. “But COVID is real. COVID is definitely real. I learned that the hard way.”
Through all the havoc, COVID, suffering, moving across the country, and uncertainty, Wilson has a surprisingly positive take on his journey. Even though he learned the hard way, it’s like he earned a triple-double.
“I know people who played this year and don’t have any scholarships to sign to. I signed with a full ride. I’m going to be getting paid to go to school, pretty much. I get back my full Pell Grant and stuff like that. A lot of people don’t get a chance to play. They’re done. I look at the positive side. I’m going to school for free, regardless.”
