The late Kobe Bryant is unquestionably the GOAT (Greatest of All-Time) among Lower Merion High School basketball players, but is he the best all-around athlete in the school’s history? – Probably not.
In November of 1991, the late Garry Kelly (he died in January of 2022) won the PIAA AAA (large schools) Cross Country Championship. A few weeks later Kelly was suiting up for the Aces’ basketball team, starting an up-and-down season that would see him average 23 points and seven steals per game.
Sadly, 1991-1992 season ended with a thud for Kelly and his Lower Merion team, when he was declared academically ineligible before the last regualar season game, and had to watch from the sideline as the Aces failed to win the Central League Title, and were eliminated in the first round of the District Championship.
Several competing coaches in the Central League didn’t think that Kelly should have scored any points at all for Lower Merion that season. 1991-1992 was his fifth year as a student at Lower Merion. Kelly did not graduate the previous year because he didn’t have enough credits. However, PIAA gave him a waiver on the grounds that his family problems were the cause of his academic problems.
When Kelly was 16, his father was arrested on drug charges.
Then in the summer of 1991, Garry Kelly was arrested, along with two others, for a burglary at Merion Elementary School.
On March 6, 1992 (when his team might have still been competing for PIAA glory) he plead guilty and was given five years probation, which kept him out of jail, but did not keep him from being a convicted felon.
Three days later, the Inquirer ran a story that mentioned the disappointing ending of Lower Merion’s basketball season. In the same article they wrote:
It won’t change the season, but Downer [referring to Lower Merion’s coach, Gregg Downer] might have another star on the way in eighth-grader Coby Bryant [That’s how they spelled it.], a 6-foot, 1-inch guard with plenty of potential. “He has a chance to be something special.” Downer said.
Bryant, who grew up in Italy, has the bloodlines. His father is Joe Bryant, a former LaSalle University star who played professionally for several years overseas. [The article overlooks the eight full seasons that Joe Bryant played in the NBA, including four with the Seventy-Sixers.]
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