When David Elien was a freshman at Chapel Hill High School, he was almost cut from the junior varsity basketball team.
Three years later, he earned his first offer to play basketball in college.
Elien’s journey on the hardwood–from a budding hooper to a college prospect–started in Cleveland, Ohio, when Elien was a young kid.
In the 2003 NBA Draft, the Cleveland Cavaliers selected an 18-year-old prodigy out of St.Vincent-St. Mary High School who had an impact on millions of people, including Elien.
“The only reason that I played basketball when I was a little kid was that I grew up in Cleveland, and, in Cleveland, everyone wanted to be LeBron,” Elien said.
When Elien moved to Chapel Hill after fourth grade, he continued to play the game in a recreational league with his friends before playing basketball for Smith Middle School. In both cases, though, Elien did not see his game take off–he mostly watched from the bench.
These are memories that Elien appreciates now because he knows how much he has grown since then.
When Elien transitioned from middle-school basketball to the junior-varsity team at Chapel Hill, he stood at six feet and three inches, an imposing height for a freshman.
But Elien still hadn’t grown into his body. He described himself in one word: awkward.
“I couldn’t really walk. It was awful,” Elien said.
As Elien continued to grow in height, though, his game did, too.
As a sophomore, Elien made the varsity roster, but, he did not feel that there was a learning curve to the varsity game because he didn’t even have time to think about it.
“On varsity, your opponents will push you around,” Elien said. “There’s not really any time to get used to it.”
Early in his sophomore season, he did not see much playing time but, when conference play started in December, Elien earned a spot in the starting lineup for the first time.
He finished the year averaging 1.7 points per game, 2.6 rebounds per game, and 0.7 blocks per game on a team that made it to the third round of the state playoffs.
His improvement during the season set the stage for the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) circuit over the summer.
And that’s when the thought of playing college basketball started to creep into Elien’s mind.
He was playing in an AAU tournament in Myrtle Beach with the current Chapel Hill High School head coach, Rodney Carter. Carter had coached Elien on JV as a freshman and then got the job as the varsity head coach in Elien’s sophomore year.
The tournament in Myrtle Beach was the first scouted event that Elien had attended. It was during the “live period” when college coaches can watch prospects.
After the event, Elien got a text from Coach Carter that read: “Virginia Tech coach just asked me about you.”
Elien was taken aback. “I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s kind of crazy.’”
That’s the moment when it clicked.
Elien made playing basketball at the collegiate level a priority and a personal goal.
By Elien’s junior year he had grown to near six feet, ten inches tall and continued to gain attention from college coaches. His towering stature also drew attention off of the court.
“Honestly, if I’m out all day, I’ll probably get asked how tall I am like five times, at the least. I was actually going to wear a tee-shirt or have business cards that say, ‘I’m 6’10” and I play basketball’,” Elien said with a laugh. “I’ve been taller than everyone all my life, so it’s nothing new to me.”
While Elien’s height allows him to throw down a dunk with ease, it also makes walking through door frames a little bit more challenging.
“When we were working the concession stands at a football game, no one else had to duck. David walked in and forgot to duck and boom!” Carter recalled with a laugh.
Thankfully, the ceiling in the Chapel Hill High School basketball gym can accommodate Elien’s height, but it’s getting harder to contain his ever-developing game.
“The coaches have made me meaner. They told me to stop playing like a guard and start playing big,” Elien said. “Over time, I grew into my body and became less awkward. The things that I am doing now I would not have been able to do my freshman year.”
Elien carried his improved skills into his junior season and was the lead big-man for the Tigers.
Elien’s statistics improved in all of the major categories. He was first in the Big Eight 3A conference with 2.9 blocks per game and finished sixth in the conference with five rebounds per game.
Elien’s most important contribution to the team may not be seen in the box score, though. His unselfishness and team-first attitude impressed Carter.
In a five point loss against Cardinal Gibbons, Elien logged three points, three rebounds, and one block, an off-night for him.
“[After the game,] he told me he shouldn’t start anymore,” Carter said, “but I kept him in there.”
Six days later, the Tigers hosted Hillside High School in the conference opener. Elien tallied 15 points, 12 rebounds, and 11 blocks in a Chapel Hill victory, recording a rare triple-double.
“The thing that I like about coaching David is that he is hard on himself,” Carter said. “He’s harder on himself than I could ever be on him.”
Elien helped lead Chapel Hill to a 10-4 conference record and 16-11 overall record. However, the Tigers fell in the first round of the state playoffs.
For athletes, the summer going into their senior year is arguably the most important. Coaches are searching to fill their recruiting classes, and uncommitted athletes are trying to impress scouts in hopes of earning a scholarship.
The buzz around Elien continued.
Videos and reports of Elien increasingly turned up on Twitter. Local basketball writers raved about Elien’s athleticism and shot-blocking ability.
A highlight showed Elien, all six feet and ten inches of him, dribbling the ball up the court, spinning past a defender, switching the ball from his left to his right hand and kissing the ball off the glass into the net, while also drawing a foul.
Another mixtape showed Elien swatting the ball out of the hands of a competitor who thought he had an open three.
One thought ran through Elien’s head, motivating him to achieve his goal: “Where am I going to be at next summer?”
Elien increased the intensity of his training. He and his father went to the weight room three times a week for an hour and a half. As a result, Elien gained ten pounds.
Elien’s hard work culminated with the sound of his phone ringing.
“I got the call on a Sunday after a tournament,” Elien said. It was a coach from UNC-Pembroke on the phone.
“He just called me out of the blue and offered me a full-scholarship. That was the best moment of my life. It was a sense of fulfillment,” Elien said.
Elien, the kid who started playing basketball because of LeBron, who struggled to thrive on the court early on, who almost got cut from the JV team, received his first offer to play college basketball.
But, “received” is not the correct word to use–nothing from his journey was given to him.
It was all earned.
After the call, the first thing that Elien did was tell his parents. “They weren’t really excited on the outside. They knew that I could do it,” Elien said. “It was good to enjoy the moment, but, after that, you have to keep on working. You can’t just settle for it.”
And settle Elien didn’t. The offers kept coming in: Winthrop, Williams College, Roanoke, Denison, Radford and Columbia have all been eager to sign the big man.
As the offers rolled in and his senior campaign neared, Elien drew the attention of the local media. Elien was interviewed by High School OT, as well as the radio broadcast from the radio station WCHL.
“It’s different,” Elien said about being noticed by the press. “Just the fact that people see me as a person of interest, that’s awesome.”
The recruiting process had heated up for Elien, as more people have begun to wonder which school he’ll choose. For Elien, who has a weighted GPA of 3.8, academics are an extremely important part of his decision.
“School is just something that my parents have instilled in me since I was a little kid,” Elien said. “Both of my parents didn’t have the resources that I have now growing up, but they were able to go to good schools and make the best of their experience. Now, they are able to give me those resources that they attained through school, and I want to be able to do the same for my family.”
Elien wants to study biomedical engineering or exercise physiology in college and is considering attending an Ivy League School. He has recently been in contact with Harvard, Dartmouth and Cornell.
“I want to go to a school where, if I don’t have the opportunity to play in the pros, I have a degree that I can use and get a real job,” Elien said.
“I’ve preached to David and all the boys that you can be really good athletes, but, without being good students, it doesn’t really matter if you are a good athlete,” Carter said. “David has positioned himself to be able to go to one of these Ivy League schools from working hard in the classroom.”
Aside from academics, Elien always asks coaches: How do you give back to your community?
“I have to know what they do to give back to the fans,” Elien said. “At Winthrop, the players go into Charlotte and work with the elementary schools and Boys and Girls Clubs. That is something that really impresses me and is something that I want to do wherever I go.”
With all of the recruiting and coaches whirling around him, Elien still had to prepare for his senior season. With the departure of last year’s senior leaders Elijah Haynes and Max Conolly, Elien has stepped into the role of team captain.
“I feel like the guys trust me enough so that I could step up,” Elien said. “I’m not going to try to lead them if they don’t trust me or think that I can’t handle it, but I feel like they do, so I took it upon myself to be more vocal.”
Through the first four games of the season the Tigers are 3-1, including two big wins over rival Carrboro. So far, Elien has averaged 7.3 points per game, 3.3 blocks per game and 7.3 rebounds per game.
“I think the thing that changed for me was my confidence,” Elien said. “I’ve had the ability to drop-step and dunk at will, but I never had confidence in myself to do that in a game. That’s there this year, and that was missing before.”
Only time will tell which uniform Elien will don next year, how many shots he’ll block in college, or how many times he will put a defender in a spin cycle.
“I think that the sky’s the limit for David,” Carter said.
One thing keeps pushing Elien to the finish line and far beyond: “[It’s] my family and all that they have done for me,” Elien said. “I just want to be able to pay that back.”
