Business career can wait for Catchings
Denise Catchings had heard what she called "the horror stories" of playing professional basketball overseas.
Her son, Bobby, honorary captain of the 2002-03 Daily Herald DuPage All-Area Boys Basketball team his senior year at Neuqua Valley, took the risk.
His experience playing for Leyma Basquet Coruña, in A Coruña, Spain, has been much more in the feel-good genre than horror.
"I've played basketball close to every day for the last 16 years or so, and this is like the pinnacle of that time period," Bobby Catchings wrote in an e-mail from Spain.
"Anyone who has played serious organized basketball has dreamed of playing professionally. And now I get a chance to do it every day. I absolutely can't get enough of it."
Denise Catchings said her 24-year-old son has dreamed of playing in the National Basketball Association since he was a boy watching Michael Jordan.
In Spain, where Bobby arrived last December after signing a one-year contract on the strength of video highlights from a May 2008 international showcase at Virginia Commonwealth University, is not near that level.
Coming off the bench to play power forward for an 8-21 team, Catchings has played in 27 of 29 games, compiling averages of 5.4 points and 2.5 rebounds in 17.5 minutes.
He realizes that, as his mother said, "he needs to crawl before he can walk."
"One of my biggest goals when I got here wasn't to score 20 points per game or be the best player in the league but to learn more about the game and see how players here approached it," Catchings wrote.
"Another goal I had was to improve my intangibles - things like passing, or heading up fastbreaks and setting up the offense."
Catchings, one of nine players at Eastern Illinois University to score more than 1,000 points with more than 500 rebounds, does not lack for mentors.
His father, Robert, played at Oregon before transferring to Southern Illinois-Edwardsville. His cousin, Harvey, ranks 45th in NBA history with 1,226 blocked shots in an 11-year career spent mainly with Philadelphia and Milwaukee.
That in no way constitutes a meal ticket, however. Bobby Catchings understands that one day in the next few years he may need to fall back on his collegiate studies and finish his courses in certified financial planning with an eye toward a career in that field.
One day.
"Even though our team is having a rough time and I have had my share of difficulties, I would never say I wish I was doing something else," he wrote.
"Because when you've played the game as long as I have you know that you've got to roll with the punches and that just being able to play this game and get paid to do it is a blessing in itself."