Karell Watkins is the 2021 Daily Times Boys Basketball Player of the Year. (Pete Bannan/MediaNews Group)
By Matthew DeGeorge
The whispers started soon after the calendar flipped to 2018. There was this kid on the Chester JV team lighting it up. He was tall for his age, but more than that, was able to score in the lane, rebound and shoot. Against JV opposition, to the tune of 30 points per game, it was man-among-boys stuff.
It wouldn’t be long, they said, until that kid would get a look on varsity, at an age when few Clippers were afforded such a promotion. And maybe, just maybe …
The last part of that sentence is often left unsaid in Chester, and powerfully so. Maybe he’d be the one to lead the Clippers back to the PIAA promised land. Maybe he’d be the next one worthy of the city’s basketball lineage. Maybe … such a loaded word when it’s painted in orange and outlined in black.
Three years and more than 1,400 points later, the promise may not have been fulfilled all the way, Karell Watkins admits. But along the way, he built one of the most outstanding Chester careers ever.