Determination, grit, and passion don’t align with throwing in the towel, sitting down, and giving up. And when it comes to New Jersey native Jake Clark, who has embodied determination, grit and passion throughout his career, nothing was going to stop him from throwing away his basketball ambition.
Clark grew up around basketball his entire life; his father played Division-1 basketball for Arizona State University, his grandfather coached girls high school basketball, and his uncle coached D2 basketball at Barton College in North Carolina.
Starting at a very young age, Clark has played basketball from elementary school through the collegiate level, where he is today.
He has gone through injuries five times in high school and was cut off from basketball his first two years at college. Still, Clark never gave up on his basketball journey.
Resilient Through Injury
Before high school basketball even started, Clark had built a name for himself. He was already being looked upon to be one of the better players in the New Jersey Shore Conference by those who knew his talent.
In his first year at Point Pleasant Beach High School, Clark suffered a labrum tear and a hip impingement in both of his hips along with a fractured pelvis. The injuries forced Clark into three months of preventative rehabilitation followed by six months of recovery after two separate surgeries.
Undeterred, Clark worked his way back to be ready for his sophomore season, eventually cracking the starting lineup on a squad with eight seniors and three 1,000-point career scorers. He played in 20 games and scored 120 points during the season, according to NJ.com.
That season, Clark and his team won the NJSIAA Central Group 1 championship, helping him regain some of his top-prospect status.
This built momentum for Clark into his junior year as he started to gain interest from D1 schools. However, a hairline fracture in his knee would cause him to miss three games. Then, in just his second game back, he was undercut by a player on the opposing team, causing an ugly fall and another injury. Clark missed the rest of his junior season due to a fractured wrist, effectively ending his exposure to D1 scouts.
The Point Pleasant Beach native took his talents to the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) for basketball after his junior year to try and regain D1 exposure where, again, disaster hit as Clark ended up with a grade four sprain in his ankle.
Clark called it frustrating, causing him to miss three more months and the AAU season.
“I kept my head up,” Clark said.
Entering his senior season, he regained Collegiate interest from the Division 3 level teams as he posted 508 points on the year and scored 20 or more points in 13 out of 28 games played, according to NJ.com.
“Doesn’t matter how many times I get injured, this is all I ever wanted to do, my passion for basketball is really what drives me and what motivates me,” said Clark.
College Brings More Hurdles
Clark started basketball at Gwynedd Mercy College, but like many people in 2020, COVID-19 disrupted his freshman year, limiting the season to just two games.
With yet another obstacle, Clark turned his COVID year into a valuable experience.
“It was really a great experience to start my college career off, kind of a head start to other freshman because I got a little glimpse of a mini-season.”
As Clark returned for his second season at Gwynedd Mercy, he went through the standard testing procedures every player does. For Clark, it was yet another fork in the road as he tested positive for Latent Tuberculosis.
Latent TB is a form of TB that causes the bacteria to be inactive.
“I can’t infect anyone else and it’s not affecting me.” Clark said.
Yet, if untreated the TB could become active and started infecting him.
Clark and his coach decided to redshirting would be his best option. That, along with the extra year of eligibility given to players due to COVID, Clark became eligible for two more years at Gwynedd Mercy, making his upcoming junior season technically his freshman year.
The diagnosis had more impact on his life than just basketball, however. Clark said the first medication he was prescribed made him sick and depressed for weeks, yet he still trained through that. He called the experience “terrible” and said he lost a few pounds from the medication.
He has since been prescribed a new medication that he said is much better.
“I’m working with a trainer to get my body into great basketball shape, where I’m putting on 20 pounds from here until I come back next fall… I also want to make shots to be automatic, where it’s hitting it like I’m Steph Curry or Trae Young,” Clark said. “When I’m on the court they know that I’m the shooter… I think that’s the biggest key for me to get on the court next year.”
Moving Forward
While battling obstacles, the tri-state athlete was named to the 2020-2021 Atlantic East All-Academic Team for student-athletes holding a 3.2 GPA or higher.
With all the challenges he faced on the court, Clark has obstacles in the classroom as well. He has a learning disability called Dyslexia, and Clark said that school has never been easy because of it, but he has overcome that by applying different strategies in the classroom.
“Juggling being a student-athlete is really difficult, you are super busy all the time, but it has to go back to that hard work and being able to do the things people don’t want to do all the time, making sure you’re getting it done and having a positive attitude about it,” Clark said.
Dyslexia has a number of unexpected consequences that Clark has learned to deal with. For instance, he has trouble discerning left from right. While this has minorly affected him on the court, he has conquered that by wearing bands on his wrists to remember the correct side or wearing his sock higher on one foot to remember that’s his right side.
He even uses the playbook to his advantage to help with his Dyslexia, memorizing if the offense is going to the right, which is his strong hand, or if the offense runs to the left, which he knows that the left side is his weak hand.
Clark wants to go into next season as the “dark horse” and let his skills on the court speak for themselves.
“They’re going to know me as the shooter on the court, the high IQ guy, and making the plays not everybody wants to do, being the hustle guy,” Clark said.
He wants to be a big contributor to the squad, whether that’s starting or coming quick off the bench, and wants to do anything possible to help the team win the conference championship.
With all his adversity, Clark is striving to get his team back to the Division 3 NCAA Tournament.
“We definitely got the tools to be able to do it, we just have to put in the work,” said Clark.
Clark’s overall goal is to play basketball professionally overseas, whether that’s in Europe, Australia, or any league that will let him play across the globe. He wants to use basketball to travel the world.
He has used his resiliency to get this far, and wants to use his work ethic to make a name for himself down the road.
“I want to be remembered as the hardest worker that you’ll ever know,” Clark said.
