Kentucky player’s success story includes key assists from his parents
Brennan Canada’s mother and father divided the parenting chores. His father, Lynn, who works as a truck driver, played high school basketball. He handled athletics.
His mother, Melissa, works in the accounting department at a car dealership in Mount Sterling. She was in charge of academics.
Each can take a bow.
Canada, a freshman walk-on for Kentucky this season, scored 1,371 points for Clark County. He was named the all-10th Region team as a senior.
As for academics, honors classes boosted Canada’s high school grade-point average in excess of 4.0. To which Melissa said, “I will take credit.”
Canada gave his mother credit for a string of straight A’s dating back to, he guessed, the fourth grade. “She always made sure I got A’s,” he said.
Actually, the last time Canada did not get an A in a class was most recently. He received B’s in the two classes he took this summer as an incoming UK freshman.
One B was in math. “I think that’s the last math class I’ll ever have to take,” he said.
The other B was in anthropology, which begged a question: Anthropology? “They just kind of put me in it,” he said.
Lynn took notice of the B’s. “Where’s your A’s?” Melissa remembered him asking.
Melissa shrugged. She took into account the transition to college, which for her son was rapid. He graduated from high school on a Friday, then moved onto campus the following Monday.
“I’m going to give him a little slack,” she said. “The first semester of college is always the hardest. I’m going to be realistic.”
Melissa did ask her son how UK’s basketball staff took the B’s.
“It’s OK, Mom,” she remembered Brennan saying.
Well before A’s on report cards became routine, Lynn introduced his son to basketball. When asked about reports that he began playing at age 5, Canada said, “Actually, I was probably in day care. I don’t know what you’d call that. Preschool? When Dad would pick me up, we’d shoot for 30 minutes before we would leave. And after that, it just carried on. I played every single day. My dad and my grandma. Whoever I could play with.”
Grandma?
“She was a rebounder,” Canada said of his father’s mother. “So she was good at that.”
Canada grew up a Kentucky fan. He and his mother made rooting for UK sound inevitable.
“We live and breathe UK basketball,” Melissa said. “Very much bleed blue.”
Canada’s favorite players included John Wall, Devin Booker and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist.
“I definitely had some jerseys,” he said. “Posters. Signed basketballs. All that stuff.”
He recalled having jerseys of Randolph Morris, Brandon Knight and Wall.
Of course, to now be a walk-on is a thrill for the family. “We were ecstatic,” Melissa said.
Clark County Coach Josh Cook said that Canada will give UK the kind of effort that produced straight A’s and a love of basketball beginning in preschool. Cook recalled a period this summer when UK gave the players permission to go home for a few weeks.
“Every day he was home he was coming to our workouts with our kids,” Cook said. “Just to work out.”
Canada explained why he did not take a break and set basketball aside.
“It’s the competition, I guess,” he said of the workouts with the high school team. “You can’t go wrong competing against one another every day. You can make yourself better and improve them.”
Canada said he took that same attitude into five-on-five games with UK teammates this summer.
“Trying to make everybody better and improve myself as well,” he said.
Cook said Canada knows and embraces his role. Canada explained his role as pushing teammates to give their all.
“Whenever they don’t want to go hard, I guess, talk to them,” he said. “‘Pick it up.’ I’m just trying to be a leader on the team. And be as vocal as you can be, too.”
It might seem that it would take some gumption for a freshman walk-on to prod celebrated UK teammates.
“I guess we hold each other accountable,” he said. “It’s kind of expected.”
Important upcoming dates
Sept. 27: Big Blue Madness ticket distribution
Oct. 1: Media Day
Oct. 6: Pro Day
Oct. 11: Big Blue Madness
Oct. 16: SEC Media Day
Oct. 18: Blue-White Scrimmage
Oct. 27: Exhibition opener vs. Georgetown College
Nov. 1: Exhibition vs. Kentucky State
Nov. 5: Season opener vs. Michigan State
