Walton takes his blue-collar style to USCAA event
NEWPORT NEWS — Drew Walton takes the workmanlike Apprentice School approach to another level.
The 6-foot-4 forward for the Builders’ basketball team does the kinds of things that are easy to quantify in a box score — his multiple 20-point, 20-rebound games this season, for example — but it’s the things undetectable in the final numbers that really set him apart.
Walton, from Hampton, has a gritty style that often puts stress on his body. He battles with bigger players for rebounds and takes charges like few players do.
“It wears you down over time,” Walton said. “I’ve gotten stitches on my face; I’ve had broken noses, injured elbows, kneecaps busted open, but I love it. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
“I’ve always been the smallest man on every team. I’ve been told ‘You’re not big enough to guard this position,’ so I’ve always had the mindset of a junkyard dog to go out there and do the dirty work for the team, sacrifice your body.”
Walton, a two-time firstteam All-American selection by the United States Collegiate Athletic Association, is a catalyst for an Apprentice team that recently won its first-ever Eastern Metro Athletic Conference championship to secure one of eight bids to the USCAA Division I small-college national championships.
The seventh-seeded Builders take on secondseeded St. Thomas of Texas in the quarterfinals at 4 p.m. today in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
“Drew is just a workhorse,” said Tim Sparks, who is in his first year as the Builders’ coach after spending the previous three seasons as an assistant. “Everything our program is about — working in the shipyard and working hard and having a hard hat and wearing steel-toed boots and everything that they do — he’s really a great example of what the apprentice builders look like because that’s just how he plays.”
Students at the Apprentice School participate in apprenticeships and advance training programs at Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News shipyard. Walton, for example, is training to be a coating specialist, while other players on the team are working as machinists, pipefitters and electricians.
As a coating specialist working in the Virginia Class submarine program, Walton works for a team that paints the vessels.
“You see how good these boats look out here in the water. We do all of that. It gets underappreciated in a way, but we’re out here putting in the work as much as anybody out here,” Walton said.
On a typical day, Walton works an eight-hour shift at the shipyard and then heads straight to practice for another two hours.
“When I coached at Virginia Wesleyan and Louisburg College, those guys love the game too, but it’s just different,” Sparks said. “It’s different because our guys are choosing to play a collegiate sport at our school after working from 7 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon on their feet all day.”
Perhaps that makes Walton’s physical style of play even more remarkable. Ice packs have become a fashion statement after games.
Sparks said Walton takes an estimated two charges per game.
“With him drawing all those charges, his elbows stay swollen,” Sparks said. “After we won the semifinal game in the conference tournament, he’s walking out of the trainer’s room with two ice bags wrapped around both of his elbows like he just got out of a war or something.”
Walton is averaging 15.6 points and 10.9 rebounds per game this season, with seven double-doubles. He is shooting 54.3% this season and 56.5% for his career.
Walton played only two seasons of basketball for Bethel High School and didn’t start until his senior season. He went to Richard Bland College for a year and then Thomas Nelson Community College beforethe Apprentice School, where he has blossomed into an indispensable player. Walton has relished his elevated role with the Builders.
“I wasn’t one of those guys who had a spotlight on him since Day One,” Walton said. “I was kind of overlooked and never really given the opportunity to play, so I just want to take advantage of this opportunity I’m getting now and do the best I can, because I know my days are numbered. It’s my time now . ...
“I’ve achieved most of the goals I set for myself. The last one is that national championship. If I can go out with that championship, I would feel like I left my mark at the Apprentice School and I’d be satisfied.”