From homeless to high school standout
Brashear’s Cheron Collington still remembers the exact moment he fell in love with the game of basketball.
“It was just really that first time I made that basket,” Collington said. “I was just jumping up, screaming — I just felt special.”
Collington wasn’t learning the game in the driveway from one of his parents, though. He was all alone at the park in the middle of the afternoon, just 5 years old at the time. Nobody was there to cheer him on or tell him,
“Good job!”
“This was just me at the basketball court. It might have been 12:00 at the time,” Collington said. “It was just me in my own little world.”
As a junior last year, Collington earned All-City honors after averaging 19.2 points per game and helping guide the Bulls to their first City League title game appearance in 11 years. Now averaging almost 25 points per game, Collington leads all City League players in scoring by more than eight points per game and ranks No. 8 among all players in the area.
A slender 6-foot-2 senior with a slick handle and smooth shooting stroke, Collington has a knack for scoring that hasn’t been seen from a City League player in quite some time. Whether he’s hitting 3-pointers, driving into the lane for tough buckets, drawing fouls or pulling up for his patented mid-range jumper, Collington has a tendency to make things look easy on the basketball court.
Although the game may come easily to him, nothing else in life has.
Collington was born in Northview Heights and grew up in a rough neighborhood in Fineview, located on Pittsburgh’s North Side. He didn’t see many options for making a living other than playing sports or getting consumed by life in the streets.
“I made a decision at a young age — it was either be in the streets or go into sports, and at the age of 10, I decided to dedicate my life to sports,” Collington said.
As his skills continued to blossom, Collington decided to move to California with his father after finishing seventh grade. According to the guidelines in California, though, he was too old to enroll in eighth grade, so he skipped a grade and became a freshman at Ernest Righetti High School.
He made varsity as a freshman but spent most of the year on the bench encouraging and hyping up his teammates, only taking the court at the end of the fourth quarter when games were already decided. In the meantime, he continued to sharpen his skills while playing for his AAU team, but his situation at home continued to deteriorate.
“From June 2016 to May 2017 I was with my dad, but during that time, it was tough,” Collington said. “I’m going to just say it because it’s part of my life — at that time, I was homeless. I was really down bad for a couple of months.”
Collington said his stepmom left his father, who was out of a job, resulting in him and his father receiving a two-week eviction notice. He said he spent five or six months living out of his father’s car, as well as in and out of hotels and other people’s houses. He started to have trouble getting to his travel basketball practices and games, and eventually it got to the point where he missed a whole week of school.
Then one day, Collington’s AAU coach, Gene Costa, came up to him at a school tournament and asked him why he hadn’t been coming to practices and games.
“I wasn’t scared anymore to tell somebody what was going on with me, because they’re worried,” Collington said. “I looked him in the eye and told him, ‘Coach, I don’t have a house right now. I’m living in a car with my dad, and it’s been tough for me to get to practice and games.’ And that’s when we both broke down and cried.
“He told me, ‘No kid should be living the way you are right now, so if you don’t mind, would you come live with us?’ I just broke down.”
Collington moved in with Costa and his family and stayed there through the rest of his freshman year and the following summer, until he and Costa agreed in September 2017 that it was time for him to move back home to Pittsburgh.
“It got to the point where I was talking with [Cheron’s] grandma and I was like, ‘I think it would be best — I would love to keep you here, but I know it’s hard for your grandma to help out financially and for me and my wife with our work, it’s kind of hard for our family that we have to make ends meet,’” Costa said.
Collington said it was a hard decision for both him and Costa, but he understood where he was coming from. So he called his grandmother, Debra Miller, and told her he wanted to come home. Two days later, she made it happen, and he has been living with her as his legal guardian ever since.
After riding the bench his freshman year, Collington was determined to become a starter and make an impact upon arriving at Brashear as a sophomore. He did exactly that, and after guiding the Bulls back to the City League title game last year, he now has his sights focused on bringing the school its first City League championship since 1995.
Doing so won’t be easy, though. Brashear goes into Friday’s games at 7-7 overall and 5-2 in section play, and the Bulls are still looking up at Obama and six-time defending City League champion Allderdice in the standings. The Dragons, who play the Bulls today, crushed Brashear in last year’s title game, 60-24.
With Collington accounting for almost half of the Bulls’ 57.1 points-per-game average, it’s clear Brashear’s role players will need to step up in the playoffs in order for them to make a run. Shouldering so much of the workload isn’t always easy for Collington, but don’t expect any complaints out of him.
“I never think about the points that I score. I find that very selfish,” Collington said. “I always wanted to play a team sport with the guys. But my game, it speaks for it all.
“And I always tell people, don’t think it’s just me. My boys are nice.”
Bulls coach Carey White said Collington is attracting interest from several Division II schools, and he expects him to be an impact player at the next level once he adds more muscle to his frame. But for now, he’s doing everything he can to help Collington end his high school career back at Petersen Events Center — only this time with a gold medal around his neck.
“That would be a nice finishing touch for his senior year,” White said. “He’s been a big part of our program for the last three years, so that would be very nice for him and for us as a team.”