Brady Clark puts up a shot in a game against Orion. [Photo by Alex Bermudez, Al-X Photography]
Brady Clark has been recognized in Kewanee for several years as an outstanding athlete. Now that recognition has gone statewide, as Brady received honorable mention in the Champaign News Gazette’s annual basketball all-state selections.
Brady is a junior at Kewanee High School and the son of head boys basketball Coach Matt Clark. The proud father listed some of Brady’s stats for the 2022-23 season:
575 points on the season. That’s an average of 19.2 points per game. He’s one of only six juniors in Kewanee’s history to score 500 or more points in a season. He now has 1,154 points for his career, which puts him at 10th place on the school’s all-time scorers list (just 13 points below the player in ninth place). Six rebounds per game. He’s among the top 35 rebounders in school history. 3.2 assists, 2.9 steals and one shot block per game.
Brady, a 6-3 guard, also led the team in taking charges – “Probably one of my favorite stats,” his father said.
Matt said his son is 11th on the KHS all-time list of three-point shots made. Brady was selected first-team all-conference for the Three Rivers Athletic Conference’s East Division.
He led both his Visitation Catholic School seventh- and eighth-grade basketball teams to the state finals. Those teams, also coached by Matt Clark, finished 21-2 and 21-1.
Brady’s interest in athletics started at an early age, and his first love was soccer. Matt said his son still enjoys watching soccer, but now he’s focused on basketball and football. In football, Brady was the starting quarterback and cornerback. His completion percentage of 62.6 helped earn him first-team honors in the Quad City Times all-Western Illinois football rankings.
Drawing on his soccer background, Brady set the school season record for kicking extra points and has the longest field goal in a postseason game in school history, a 40-yarder that gave the Boilers a playoff win against Polo in 2021. Matt said his son is still undecided on where he will attend college, but said he hopes to be able to play basketball wherever he ends up.
*Statistics for this story were compiled by Jerry Salisbury.
