BRUSSELS (NBC 26) — Southern Door’s Drew Daoust will go down as one of the best high school basketball players in Wisconsin history, but no matter how many shots he makes, all he cares about is making a deep run to state.
“I have a feeling that his jersey is going to be hung up in the rafters,” said Eagles head coach Josh VandenBush.
“Nobody can guard him – not even close,” said Daoust’s best friend and teammate, senior guard Caden Pierre.
“It helps when you got a guy out there like Drew,” said Daoust’s brother and assistant coach for the Eagles, Alex Daoust.
If you ask his coaches, teammates or even his brother, they all knew Drew Daoust was going to be a special player when he was in 8th grade.
“8th grade when we won the state championship – very early on you could tell,” Pierre said.
“(He) won the middle school’s 8th grade state championships and Drew was putting up 40 points and those kinds of things," VandenBush said. “We knew that he was going to be able to score, we didn’t know that it would translate so well to the high school level.”
From there he’s risen up the state’s scoring ranks. Reaching over 1,000 points scored by the end of his sophomore year, over 2,000 by his junior season and now he’s only 132 away from 3,000.
“My mentality is just to go at the other team,” said Daoust. “I really don’t care who’s guarding me. I'm not saying it to be cocky or anything, but I truly think nobody can guard me.”
On January 30 against Brillion, he became the state’s 2nd all-time leading scorer. Daoust only trails Anthony Pieper of Wausaukee, who finished with 3,391 points 32 years ago.
“I've tried to comprehend it a couple times, how many people played boys basketball in the state of Wisconsin,” said the Eagles star. “To be 2nd all-time, it’s like woah. It comes with a lot of pressure too – just trying to handle that and then keeping the focus on the team.”
What people don’t see is the countless hours Drew has put in on his own time to hone his craft. Most of it is with his brother Alex, who is also an assistant coach.
“Freshman to junior year it was almost every night in the summer for two hours,” Alex said. Sometimes we would go to the gym at 9, 10 o'clock just to get it in. Honestly, just fell in love with the process and that’s why he’s the player that he is.”
As for what drives him, it’s not the records or putting up as many points as possible. Daoust says, it’s the community, his team and the Eagles players who have come before him.
“You see our games, you know that there’s a ton of community of members, there's a ton of former players that come and watch,” said Daoust. “They’re depending on you and your team to continue the groundwork that they laid.”
The UW-Stevens Point commit said the ultimate goal is to make it to state and one thing the multi-sport star has done is savor every moment of his special Southern Door career, that as his head coach said, will likely have his jersey in the rafters one day.
“I really can’t even comprehend my jersey – number 1(as a) freshman, being hung up,” Daoust said.
