Okay, so I got curious about Ant Simons the other day, specifically about his high school situation. You hear about these guys making the leap, and his name came up.
My Initial Digging
First thing I did was just start searching around, you know, basic stuff. Tried to figure out where he actually played ball before the NBA. Lots of noise out there, but I kept seeing IMG Academy pop up. That place in Florida.
So, I focused on that. Looked into what IMG Academy actually is. It’s not quite your regular neighborhood high school, right? It’s more like a super-focused sports place. They get kids from all over, really serious athletes.
Finding the Key Detail
What really caught my eye was how he got into the draft straight from there. I remember thinking, “Wait, I thought you had to do the one-and-done college thing?” That rule had been around for a while.
Turns out, the trick was he did a post-graduate year at IMG. So technically, he’d finished his high school requirements the year before. That post-grad year made him eligible for the draft age-wise and because he was a year removed from his original high school graduating class. Kinda clever, working the system a bit.
Putting it Together
So, the process went something like this for me:
- Got curious about Simons’ path.
- Started basic searches online.
- Kept seeing IMG Academy mentioned.
- Looked into IMG specifically.
- Figured out the post-graduate year loophole.
- Understood how he bypassed the usual college route.
It wasn’t like he just jumped straight from his junior year or something. There was that extra year of prep involved, which was the important part I wasn’t initially aware of. It made sense once I pieced it together. Just took a bit of looking around and connecting the dots. Pretty interesting journey compared to most guys entering the league these days.