Draper definitely a part of West Chicago squad
All Ian Draper wanted was to be part of something.
He'd sit outside his West Chicago home and watch the neighborhood kids play ball and ride bikes. He wanted so much to join them.
“It was hard to just sit there and watch,” he said.
Starting when he was a kindergartner Draper was struck with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. The affliction was systemic; restriction and pain wasn't limited to one or two joints, it could strike any organ in his body, at any time.
“You know the feeling when you've been running around hard all day and your joints and muscles are just so sore when you go to bed at night?” he asks rhetorically. “I felt that a lot, all over.”
Draper was in and out of wheelchairs, and hospitals, bed-bound months at a time. The debilitation was so fierce his parents, Keith and Barb Draper, began home schooling him for fear he'd fall behind academically. It's a practice they continue still with Ian and his three younger brothers and four younger sisters, who also helped care for their eldest sibling.
“We wanted to face it as a family,” Keith Draper said.
The mixture of inactivity and medication sapped Ian's strength, boosted his hunger and slowed his metabolism. During his middle school years Draper's weight rose to nearly 200 pounds.
The low point, Keith Draper recalled, was when Ian was around 11 or 12. The Make-A-Wish Foundation granted Ian's request for a laptop computer. Unlike a trip to Disneyland, that computer could continue serving his family after he was gone.
“He recognized at that point he might die,” said Keith Draper, a Baptist minister and the executive director of the Chicago Metropolitan Baptist Association. “And he just prayed that he wouldn't cause too much sorrow to our family.”
It still pains Ian to remember his mother seeing what resembled a hobbling old man as Ian dragged his IV stand from bedroom to bathroom. The family's spirituality brought solace.
“I relied on God, and whatever His will was for me, He had a plan,” Ian said.
His health improved. Around age 13 he was taken off medication, and the arthritis had run its course. (Draper said he will be susceptible to an earlier onset as an adult.). Soon enough he was able to play with those neighborhood kids. He dieted and started getting fitter, setting the stage for what his father called a “contemporary Rudy” story.
His academics in order and coming off several years of Friday night basketball at the YMCA, Draper tried out for West Chicago's varsity basketball team as a junior. He didn't make the team, which only focused his motivation.
Draper stepped up his game by lifting weights. He pared 30 pounds off his physique to what it is now, 163 pounds on a 6-foot-3 frame (“in shoes,” he said). He started shooting around and lifting weights at the high school with his brother Graham, who is on the sophomore team.
“At first,” Wildcats coach Kevin Baldus said, “I was like, ‘Who is that?'”
Ian Draper's work ethic impressed Baldus, who until contacted for this story did not know of Draper's prior condition.
Before final cuts were made Baldus met with Draper. Baldus told the boy his minutes may be limited.
“His response was, ‘Coach, I don't care, I just want to be part of something.'
“When he said that, it was a no-brainer to keep him,” Baldus said. “And he's actually getting to a point where when I'm looking for substitutes for a starter, your eyes start to go to him.”
Draper has played in four of 14 games, scoring 4 points with 2 rebounds and a steal. That's all gravy. He savors the competition, camaraderie and strategy high school athletics offers. He relishes testing himself against players he considers “better than me.”
“He's absolutely having the time of his life,” Keith Draper said.
For so long it wasn't much of a life. Ian Draper got a second chance.
“It's a great blessing,” he said. “I'm loving every single minute of it. I still just can't believe it happened this year for me.”
Huskies in the Hall
Naperville North's sixth class of Athletic Hall of Fame inductees will be honored before the boys varsity basketball game against Wheaton North at 7:30 p.m. Friday.
This group offers a little of everything.
There's former 19-year boys cross country coach Gus Scott, a member of the Illinois High School Track and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame, who directed four top-10 finishes and three individual state champions.
Eric Tannenbaum (Class of 2003) was a three-time state wrestling champ with an unfathomable 176-1 high school record. Tannenbaum became a four-time All-America at Michigan and two-time Big Ten champ.
Bruce Reynolds (1987) was the 1986 state champion high jumper and a three-time All-America and 1992 Division III national champion at Wisconsin-LaCrosse. Megan Mull (2003) won 10 high school letters in golf, basketball and soccer before earning Academic All-America honors while on Penn State's women's golf team.
All-state football player Bill Korosec (1991) holds Naperville North's single-season touchdowns record and was team MVP in football, basketball and baseball. Another Huskies all-stater, Bobby Carlsen (1986) was the third baseman on the 1990 College World Series All-Tournament Team, playing for runner-up Oklahoma State. Carlsen played infield in the Oakland and Cincinnati systems from 1990-92.
Falling like trees
Entering Thursday, Hinsdale Central 285-pound wrestler Jack Allen, who was an all-state football lineman committed to play at Michigan State, was 27-0 and second all-time in program career victories with 124. The season's running out, but he's approaching 2007 graduate Frank Battaglia's program-record 141 wins.
Senior 145-pounder Terry Ward has passed two places to sit third all-time at Hinsdale Central with 121 victories. Ward just passed Ben Black (1997) and Matt Tolbert (2007).
doberhelman@dailyherald.com