Shooting star Braeden Head steals the spotlight at annual Alley-Oop for Awareness game with nine-point outburst

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

The 11th Annual Alley-Oop for Awareness in the Chesterton gym always is a hit with players and spectators alike.
This year’s game took on a new crowd-pleasing aspect Friday when one player caught fire and put on a memorable shooting display, scoring nine points and leading his team to a 15-12 victory.
His name is Braeden Head and his game is basketball, his chief talent shooting. A junior in the high school’s exceptional learning program taught by the Alley-Oop coaches, Mrs. (Jamie) Evans and Mrs. (Jessica) Evans.
The game has at least two aspects in common with the annual NBA All-Star Game. First, every player who participates is a star. Second, precious little defense is played.
Nobody held the no-D reality against Jayson Tatum when he scored a record 55 points in the 48-minute, 2023 NBA All-Star Game, so nobody should hold it against Head, whose nine points came in a 10-mnute game.
Braeden’s grandfather is Chesterton Athletic Hall of Fame 2023 inductee Fred Mitchell, a star athlete at Chesterton and then a coach for 60 years. Mitchell scored 979 points during his Chesterton career without the benefit of the 3-point rule. As Mitchell has been know to say when ribbing lesser basketball talents in the athletic department, he scored more points by mistake than they did on purpose.
If the rules in place during Mitchell’s day were in effect Friday, his grandson would only have scored eight points because one of his four field goals was from the right corner, beyond the 3-point line.
After the ball swished through the net, Head whipped around and shot varsity boys basketball coach Marc Urban a look that if put into words would say four words: “Put me in, Coach.”
Head then went to the other end of the court and flexed for the crowd, a shooter and a showman all in one.
“He’s a good shooter, he really is,” Mitchell said of his grandson.
Mitchell said he couldn’t take credit for teaching Braeden how to shoot because it was Braeden’s father, Scott, who showed him the way. Mitchell could and did take credit for his athletic genes getting passed to Braeden.
When Braeden was in about third grade, Mitchell said the boy’s father told him, “You have to come see Braeden shoot.”
So he did.
“I was surprised,” Mitchell said. “He was a good shooter right from the start. He would shoot for hours by himself, shoot and chase the ball, or make one of us stand under the basket and pass it to him. Scott and I did a lot of rebounding for him.”
Mitchell used to play H-O-R-S-E with Braeden, until his grandson beat him.
“That’s when we stopped playing. He’s always trying to get me to play and I tell him, ‘You’ve already proved you’re better than me, so I’m not going to shoot with you anymore.’ He got a kick out of that,” Mitchell said.
Every year one of the highlights of the game is the national anthem, when several players pass the microphone to a friend to sing a line from the “Star Spangled Banner.”
“It brings tears to my eyes every year,” Mitchell said. “These kids are so unique, just different kinds of kids, not a worry in the world, having a great time, just beautiful kids. And those gals who teach them do such a great job with them. And the students here at the school have always been very inclusive, not just the basketball players, all the students, whoever’s in the room with them. This is a pretty good place. Small town.”
Small town, big crowd every year for the Alley-Oop for Awareness game.