“It’s always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you’re going.”
— Anthony Burgess
Chris Braley will never forget where he comes from; he sees his snow-covered hometown and the small community that has always supported him covering his face every time he looks in the mirror.
“It’s really important to me that I always remember where I come from, who I am, and who helped me get here — that way I’ll never lose sight of where I’m going,” says Braley, a sophomore forward for Stony Brook University and native of Newport, Maine.
At 6-feet-5-inches and somewhere in the neighborhood of 240-pounds of muscle-on-top-of-muscle-on-top-of-muscle, with a tree trunk for a neck, arms that look like vein-covered iron beams extending from a pair of bowling balls, and a mountainous mane of flowing locks jutting from a granite jawline, Braley appears every bit the part of the Mainer. He looks like he would have been right at home joining Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine in defending Little Round Top.
It’s an identity that he embraces, embodied in the voluminous beard that he has been growing since the fall, and the energy and eagerness to mix it up and throw elbows as a bruiser off the bench.
“It keeps me in touch with my roots and keeps me humble and reminds me that I’m from Maine,” Braley proudly says of his facial hair. “My dad can grow a pretty mean beard and so can a lot of my family, so it’s kind of in homage to them and my heritage.”
“Chris will run through a wall,” says Seawolves head coach Steve Pikiell, “and he plays the game exactly the way he looks: incredibly tough and incredibly physical, and I think that’s a reflection of where he comes from and how far he’s had to come to reach his dream of playing college basketball.”
Where Braley comes from is a nearly 37 square-mile swath of great white north, dotted by shuttered sawmills, farmland and crystalline waterways sparsely populated by less than 3,300 hearty and hard-working souls.
“I shoveled a lot of snow,” he laughs, describing his hometown. “It’s very small. I went to a high school with about 750 people, if that. It was an extremely tight-knit community. People don’t have a lot, but they work extremely hard for everything and appreciate everything they have,” he says, adding, “It was a really great place to grow up.”
Rural Maine might be a great place to walk in the woods and go snowmobiling, but when it comes to a heavily recruited high school basketball scene, it’s a barren wasteland. So how does a kid go from there to Division I ball?
“What it boiled down to was I did a lot of working on my own, and I had great support from my family and from the small but really intense basketball community,” Braley says.
According to Braley, his basketball journey began in grade school when he began to build up his now impressive physique by “shoveling a ton of snow, every single day,” coupled with the used basketball hoop his father, Scott, purchased second-hand.
“He let me pick whatever sport I wanted,” says Braley.
In middle school, Braley dabbled in football, a sport he would seem a natural for (“He’s got that body, I’ve had to make sure our own football team doesn’t recruit him out from under me,” jokes Pikiell), but basketball had taken hold of him and wouldn’t let him go.
“It was always my first love,” Braley says. “I played other sports, but basketball was always my main focus.”
In high school, Braley spent his first three years playing for Nokomis High, a regional high school that isn’t even a blip on the recruiting radar. But according to Braley, he benefited tremendously by being pledged into the small but vibrant Maine basketball fraternity.
“There are two AAU programs that gain a lot of exposure by going to all the different venues, and my high school coach coached one of them and I played for the other,” says Braley. “All the best players play for one of those two teams, and if there’s a scholarship-level player at any level, they’re known by everyone.”
During his time in high school Braley became best friends with another similarly built local basketball star, Garet Beal of Jonesport-Beals High, who now suits up at Stony Brook’s conference rival University of Maine.
“He’s one of my best friends. I was home for the first summer session and we lived together this summer and worked out all the time,” says Braley, who had Beal as a guest at his family’s Christmas dinner. “Honestly, I think we both played a large part in each other’s career because we were always pushing each other.”
After three years at Nokomis, Braley transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy, a prestigious prep school in Exeter, New Hampshire, and reclassified. During his two years playing in the NEPSAC Class A, a prestigious prep league, Braley served as team captain, leading his team to a historic 25-1 season and league championship during his final season.
Braley chose Stony Brook over the University of Maine, the prodigal son choosing to set out on his own path, but after finding instant success at high school and prep school, he’s found himself coming off the bench as a reserve in his first two seasons on Long Island. As a freshman, Braley averaged just 1.1 points, 1.2 rebounds and 5.8 minutes per game. Through 15 games this season, he has averaged 1.7 points, 2.1 rebounds and 9.8 minutes.
“I had a huge role at my high school in Maine and I went to a boarding school in New Hampshire and had a big role, and then coming here and coming off the bench was definitely a big adjustment,” says Braley.
According to Pikiell, Braley has played a valuable role for the team, and the head coach is hoping he can play an even bigger one as the Seawolves chase the first NCAA Tournament appearance in school history.
“Chris is an excellent rebounder, and he brings tremendous toughness,” Pikiell says. “Now we need him to turn into that great shooter we recruited him as.”
Braley is going to do whatever his coach needs him to do.
“What it boils down to is just doing whatever it takes to help the team win,” he says. “I try to bring toughness and a lot of intangibles and also my shooting.”
An avid fitness fanatic, Braley is majoring in health science and would like to one day be a professional strength trainer and own his own gym, but right now, his sights are squarely set on doing whatever it takes to help Stony Brook break through to the NCAAs.
“Waving towels, coming up with handshakes and chants on the sidelines, throwing elbows, grabbing boards, handing out water — whatever they need me to do, I’m going to do it,” he says.
And wherever he goes, he’ll always be carrying where he comes from with him.
“I’ll always be from Maine,” he says. “I’m proud of who I am and where I’m from, and it’s why I’m here today.”
Sam Perkins is the editor-in-chief of onebidwonders.com, a website that provides comprehensive coverage of college basketball.