On Wednesday night, February 1st in front of his teammates, family, and friends Dan Decker made a free throw that marked point 1000 in his career. In a complete paradox though, those 1000 points were earned in front of no one. Dan “Triple” Decker began doing basketball workouts in the TCS gym in the summer of 2009 with his older brother, Fran as he trained to get ready to play college basketball at Houghton College. The passion to improve soon grew red hot inside of Dan and he added strength training, and speed training to his basketball workouts. At home and at TCS, Dan would work tirelessly with no one paying attention. Dan made an unheard of 21,000 shots in the summer of 2010 and another 20,000 in the summer of 2011 all while playing hundreds of games for his AAU basketball team and TCS’ summer league team. Dan’s work has paid off as he currently leads the GMC in 3 point shooting and 3 point shooting percentage; he is also ranked 8th in the entire state in 3 pointers made per game.
It is often said that in order to do what you want to in front of people, you have to do what you need to when they’re not watching. Dan wanted to make a free throw for his 1000th point while people watched Wednesday night; thankfully for TCS, Dan had already made that shot….over 40,000 times when no one watched.
Congratulations, Dan Decker!