Sinclair star finds his spotlight

Dr. Jerome Cureton, now on leave from his Indianapolis dental practice and deployed in Washington D.C. as an Army Colonel with the Indiana National Guard, took time Friday to recall a briefing session of a personal nature some years back.

Trace, the second of his four sons (who are five years apart), came to him and his wife, Marie, with some puzzled speculation that left them with sympathetic smiles.

“It was kind of comical,” Dr. Cureton said. “He wanted to know if we were giving our youngest son, Luke, extra vitamins because he was, well, a behemoth. We told him ‘no’ and Trace, who was small then, was like, ‘Well, then, what’s wrong with me? This just isn’t fair.’”

If Trace was feeling a little overshadowed back then, it was understandable.

His older brother, Justin, was a celebrated athlete at their school — Cathedral High in Indianapolis — and would go on to stardom as a centerfielder for the Indiana Hoosiers baseball team.

“Justin was a natural athlete, gifted, Mr. Everything, and that put some unfortunate pressure on Trace growing up,” Dr. Cureton said. “And his brother was a typical older child, the alpha male who wouldn’t step aside or give in to him. It was like, ‘You’re not getting any of the sunshine.’ ”

The third brother, Ian, was a football player, who is now a walk-on defensive back at Ball State, which just played earlier this week in the GoDaddy Bowl in Mobile, Ala.

And Luke? He’s now a 220-pound centerfielder for the Hoosiers.

Meanwhile, as he was coming out of Cathedral, where he played basketball, ran track and played tennis, Trace was still a bit undersized and unsure of himself. Although he had a 3.7 grade-point average, his basketball stats were anemic and Cornell University, which had shown interest, never made an offer. Nor did other Division I schools.

“Trace felt like the black sheep, the one left out,” his dad said. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with Michael Jordan’s Space Jam movie? But that’s the parable for Trace’s life. The knock-kneed, skinny guy who’s not too confident — that was him.”

And yet if you know the Space Jam tale, you know the underdog Tune Squad overcame its deficiencies and insecurities and was gloriously triumphant in the end.

And that’s now the case with Trace.

He’s the 6-foot-4 star of the Sinclair Community College basketball team that is 15-2 and ranked No. 7 in the nation.

Going into today’s game at Lakeland C.C., near Cleveland, he is Sinclair’s leading scorer (17.1 points per game) 3-point shooter (51.0 percent), and rebounder (7.2) while ranking second in assists and blocked shots.

“Trace Cureton can do it all,” said Sinclair coach Jeff Price. “He’s a great kid. He does all the community service we ask. He helps with our study table and he leads us on the court.”

‘True late bloomer’

Cureton’s parents met in dental school at Howard University and eventually opened a practice in Indianapolis. Dr. Cureton, initially in the Army Reserve, has been in the service some 25 years.

He said this is the fifth time he’s been deployed since the attacks of 9/11. Over the years he’s been sent to Kuwait, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, South America and a few places domestically.

In recent years his Army commitments have cost him a few Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays at home with the family, including this year.

“That helps in the conversations with the boys about the tougher moments in life and how to overcome them” he said. “You have to learn to be resilient.”

No one has taken that lesson more to heart than Trace, who finally began to grow late in his high school career and became, as his dad puts it, “a true late bloomer.”

Although Cornell failed to make an offer, one of the Big Red assistant coaches suggested Trace develop his game at the junior college level and suggested Sinclair. He knew Jeff Price and said he was a coach who had success getting his players picked up by four-year schools.

“I emailed Coach Price and sent him a video and he told me to come on over,” Trace said.

Community college athletes don’t get the silver-spoon treatment Division I players get at places like Ohio State, Dayton and Wright State, so instead of special dorms and apartments and bountiful training table meals, you fend for yourself.

“My brother, when he played baseball at IU, he had a banquet every night,” Trace said with a laugh. “We don’t have that. I live by myself in an apartment on Superior Ave. I stop by Kroger, buy some groceries and prepare my dinner when I get home.”

While many D-1 basketball players spend summers on campus playing in open gyms, he was back in Indianapolis last summer helping at his dad’s clinic and working as a busboy at Ocean Prime, a fancy steak and seafood restaurant in the city’s Keystone Crossing Corridor.

“It’s all worked out fine,” Trace said. “I just wanted a place to finally show what I could do and Sinclair has provided that.”

That was evident last Wednesday night when Sinclair, led by Trace’s 20 points on 7-for-10 shooting, overwhelmed Clark State, 86-62.

To get an idea of the impact the sophomore guard can make, consider the first 2 1/2 minutes of the second half when he blocked Clark State’s first shot and then took the deflection the length of the floor, through three defenders, for an easy layup. The next possession he hit a 3-pointer and right after that he stole the ball from the Eagles.

Yet his most impressive outing this season came when Sinclair, a Division II junior college, went to play perennial Division I power Vincennes (Ind.), which is 13-1 and ranked No. 9 in the nation.

Although Sinclair lost, Trace had 32 points and 11 rebounds.

“I knew they had a couple of guys who are going Division I — a couple of guys who were really hyped — and I just wanted to show them, ‘I’m up there with you guys,’ ” he said. “I wanted them to know it was not going to be a cakewalk.”

In demand now

When the boys were growing up, their parents pushed them to be well-rounded and try different things.

And so Luke is in a gospel choir and some of the boys pursued art or were avid readers and all four were required to take piano lessons.

“My wife grew up with formal piano lessons and we have the piano from her childhood in our house,” Dr. Cureton said. “Music is another of those gifts for life so we had them take formal lessons when they were young.

“They went to recitals and all that, but eventually they were fired. Their teacher said, ‘I’m not taking any more of your money. They’re not practicing.’ ”

“The problem was we just weren’t disciplined then — we thought more about sports — and I think our teacher actually paid our dad so we wouldn’t come any more,” Trace said with a laugh.

Yet, never one to fully accept a snub, Trace has since recommitted himself to music and this past Christmas he asked for — and got — a Yamaha keyboard.

“I’ve got it in my room now and I’m practicing and learning new songs,” he said. “I know ‘Seasons of Love’ and some Coldplay and I’m working on a John Lennon song. It turns out I might be better than I thought.”

The same goes for the court.

“A lot of four-years schools — both low D-I and high D-II — are inquiring about him now,” Price said. “I’ll get these D-II assistants who call and say, ‘My coach insisted I call, but I figure he’s going D-I. But we sure would like him.’ ”

Trace Cureton is no longer the kid left out.

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