Meghan Green ‘21
The student section stood as a unit chanting and cheering the players on the court. The player's sprinted up and down the court as the opposing team struggled to keep the home team from advancing. Time was ticking and the stands were shaking as the fans were getting rowdy. The Dunellen Destroyers Boys Basketball team played against the Middlesex Bluejays on their home court at John P. Faber Elementary School on Wednesday, December 26, 2019. The long-standing rivalry between the towns made it vital for the boys to achieve a win. However, the game presented even more pressure for Tyje’ Kelton, Junior at Dunellen High School, was attempting to score his thousandth career point.
Tyje’ Kelton is a skillful and determined basketball player who has been playing on Varsity for the past three years of his high school career. His freshman year he ended the season with scoring 359 points and averaging 14.4 points per game. During his sophomore year, he scored 525 points and averaged 20.2 points per game. Currently, Kelton has scored 300 points and is averaging 20 points per game as a junior.
“When I reached 1,000 points I was very emotional. I was so relieved that I reached it. I had a lot of mixed feelings during the moment. The crowd was screaming, teammates cheering me on and I had some tears running down my face when I hugged my mom. It was a feeling like no other, it felt like an ounce of a lifetime thing.” Kelton said.
Coach Howie Horowitz has been coaching Kelton since his freshman year as a basketball player and explains that scoring one thousand points is something that is not mentioned as a way to keep pressure off the player in order for the player to accomplish their goal.
Photo of Tyje’ Kelton shooting a layup at the Middlesex vs Dunellen basketball game.
“Scoring a thousand points has a lot of circumstances, as far as, playing time, how good the team is around them, how much work they do on their own.” Coach Horowitz said.
Tyje’ Kelton has proven that his work on and off the court has helped him to achieve his goal of scoring a thousand points. In addition, he had a supportive team along the way that assisted him with every shot, which led him to eventually surpass a thousand points as a junior in high school.
“Some other achievements I have accomplished during my basketball career was winning all division freshman and sophomore year. Sophomore year, I also reached a career-high in scoring against South Amboy. I scored 40 points with I think a game-high of 5 three-pointers. In addition to my achievements, I’ve also been nominated every year to the top players in the class of 2020 list.” Kelton said.
With two years left, Kelton has time to leave an even greater impact on Dunellen High School Athletics.
“I hope to be able to reach my 2,000 points in my last 2 years of high school and maybe be able to win a state championship. It might be overshot but I think we can compete with the teams in the state and be able to win the state championship. It’s going to be a difficult task but I believe that we can win.”
With a thousand points out of the way and beating Dunellen’s rival, the Middlesex BlueJays, Kelton and the team are on to bigger things this season. Coach Horowitz and the team have set high goals to accomplish this season.
Coach Horowitz said, “Some of our goals that we set out at the beginning of the year, one of them were to win our division, we currently stand at 10-0 in the division. Another goal of the team was to reach it to Super Sunday, which I believe the girl's team did a couple of years back. That's winning the eight and nine game in the GMC tournament. And making a run in the state tournament. Try to win as many games as possible."
With the second half of the season coming up, the Dunellen boys basketball team is determined to end the season with many accomplishments.