The Day's All-Area Boys' Basketball Player of the Year: St. Bernard's Amyre Gray
Apr. 27—There's something fitting about this story making the Sunday paper. Sunday is the most unassuming day of the week, often quiet and contemplative, once described as "the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week."
This story is about Amyre Gray, who is the Sunday of high school basketball players. Quiet, unassuming and undeniably the golden clasp. At least at St. Bernard, where his leadership, tied through his actions and not even a hint of self-indulgence, was the catalyst for another outstanding basketball season.
Gray, The Day's 2024 All-Area Boys' Basketball Player of the Year, led the Saints in virtually every tangible (and intangible) category, carrying his team back to the state championship game. St. Bernard didn't win, but then neither has it lost to an Eastern Connecticut Conference opponent in more than two years now.
"An outstanding player," coach Mark Jones said. "A leader. A great kid. As he went, we went."
Indeed. And it wasn't necessarily easy at times, especially in the state tournament, where the Saints survived rock fights against Crosby, Kolbe Cathedral and Ridgefield. Each time, there was Gray, a junior guard and 1,000-point scorer, with a late basket that his team needed more than a lung.
It was about this time last offseason that Gray, who had helped the Saints win their first state title since the early '80s, planned to change his game.
"Last year, I was just playing my role as point guard, but coach Mark was always telling me to shoot the ball," Gray said. "I was pretty hesitant. I was a passer last year. But over the summer, I thought that nobody was going to expect me to score. My guys really shaped me into becoming a better scorer and playmaker."
More than that, though, Gray has become a pied piper for the basketball program. Jones has coached the Saints for a while. He knows this basketball renaissance didn't happen with a finger snap.
"I think what gets lost in this sometimes, because we've had some success with these (current) kids, is that we forget about the other kids that came before them that laid the foundation for this," Jones said. "Max (Lee), Hunter (Baillargeon), DeAndre (Williams), JoJo (Beltran), all these guys that have played before. That really made it cool to actually come here."
Gray had other choices. His dad, Nick, played on a state championship team at New London. His brother, Syncere, played at New London and Ledyard. But Amyre Gray saw something else.
"Before I came here, I think we were in (state) Division IV," he said. "Freshman year, I got here and we're in Division III. And I knew that me, Amare (Marshall) and Devan (Williams), we were going to switch the entire team. We almost made it all the way (losing in the quarterfinals). The next year, we did it. Now we're Division I."
Division I, by far the most competitive in the state, provided a gauntlet not just in the state tournament but throughout the regular season. St. Bernard, a top 10 team all year, played a brutal schedule, including defending Division I champion East Catholic twice.
"The kids accomplished a lot," Jones said in the wake of the state championship game loss to ultimately undefeated Notre Dame of West Haven. "But Division I is hard."
Happily, St. Bernard will return to Division I with its leader back for his senior season.
The Day's 2024 All-Area Boys' Basketball Team
Player of the Year — Amyre Gray (St. Bernard)
Deondre Bransford (Wheeler)
Xavier Goode (Fitch)
Curtis Marshall (St. Bernard)
JJ Robinson (Fitch)
Devan Williams (NL)
