Tobias Ray will use his ultra-soft shot to entertain big Chesterton basketball crowds for one more season before moving on to nearby Purdue Northwest University as a scholarship player at the NCAA Division II school

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Feisty, armed with a strong handle and sophisticated court vision, Chesterton senior guard Tobias “TJ” Ray blends multiple traits that make him an entertaining basketball player.
But all those qualities take a back seat to watching his peaceful dagger of a 3-point shot drop so gently through the nylon that the net barely seems to notice and quivers just the slightest bit.
Not only that, he gets rid of the ball so quickly it’s as though he thinks it’s a hand grenade.
The shot has been a work in progress, one that dates back to when he was too small to shoot at a 10-foot rim.
“When he was younger he used to shoot a hundred shots a day in the driveway, especially in the summer,” said his aunt, Amanda Koetter. “The kid would sleep with his basketball.”
Added her sister, Missy Santana, the new principal at South Central High School in Union Mills: “I taught him everything he knows! He’s been doing it since he was a year old. That was his punishment when he was little. He would get his basketball taken away.”
Tobias’ father, Tim Ray, who stands 5-foot-9, wasn’t sure how tall his son would grow, so he figured if he ever became a college athlete it probably would be in one of the other sports where he showed talent. TJ, who has grown past his father by a few inches, finished fourth at the DAC middle school cross country meet, was a natural on the golf course, and excelled on the soccer pitch. Tim, an assistant coach to Marc Urban, encouraged his son to play multiple sports.
But once high school hit, the gym rat wanted to be in the gym putting up shots, so if he was going to do that, he was going to do it in a way that made sense, with his father as his shot doctor/cop.
“I think he’s lefthanded because when he was really young, my brother-in-law had gotten a mini basketball hoop and it could raise to 9 feet,” Tim remembered. “It was a glass backboard and a rim, and when he would shoot, he would shoot with his left hand. Then over time he started shooting with his right hand.”
Instructors of young boys and girls who have shown an interest in basketball, listen up.
“Then when he got to be 4 years old, 5 years old, I wouldn’t let him shoot on a 10-foot rim,” Tim said. “Then I would never let him shoot a 3-pointer until sixth or seventh grade,”
Why?
“You’d be shooting from there (mimes holding a basketball at the hip),” he said. “You don’t have the strength at that age to shoot a 3-pointer with proper mechanics.”
The father having the keys to the gym helped the gym rat practice his passion and develop into a prototypical small-town Indiana high school basketball guard armed with a peaceful dagger.
“We’d go up to the high school for hours and hours and shoot from 10, 15 feet,” Tim said. “And we’d work on the right form, right mechanics.”
A step-by-step process led to his shot becoming what it is today.
A shooting guard and starter as a freshman, Ray was set up by senior Tyler Parrish drawing the defense and dishing.
Ray nailed 44% of his 3-pointers. Then Parrish, now in his third year of college basketball and first in Division I at Winthrop, wasn’t around to serve as the lead guard and Ray shifted onto the ball. He had to become better at driving and dishing and at shooting off the dribble.
And since he had become strong enough it was time to make the final major adjustment to his shot, one that both his father and Urban backed.
“Even when you’re not shooting 3s, when you’re younger, you still have to kind of heave it up there and you’re using that opposite thumb to push the ball up and we’ve really worked on getting that thumb out of there the past couple of years,” Tim said. “And he has much better technique now than he had. Still, it’s kind of hard to convince a kid who’s shooting 44% (on 3-pointers) as a freshman, ‘Hey, let’s change your shot.’ ‘What are you talking about? I’m shooting 44%?’ But as you get older it’s going to change a little bit. He struggled a little bit with it sophomore year, but we worked and worked to where he was shooting close to 50% last year.”
In addition to making the rotation of the shot even more pure and consistent, TJ said removing his left thumb from the shot made shooting off the dribble smoother.
“During freshman year, it mostly was just kind of stand around and shoot, and I used my thumb a lot,” he said. “And it was harder before my sophomore year in the summer because I was on the ball a lot more, and I was dribbling and shooting and it was just hard to have my thumb in there.”
In working with his son, Tim always put a premium on getting the shot off quickly. As a 5-foot-9 walk-on in his final two seasons at Ball State, Tim was reminded of the importance of that when guarded daily in practice by much longer athletes.
“We worked on that, just the rhythm, the tempo of the shot,” Tim said. “All right, it’s going to be 1, 2 shot. He got a lot of repetitions: 1, 2 shot.”
Meaning?
“Your footwork,” he said of stepping into the shot. “When the ball’s coming, you’re 1,2, and when you catch it, you’re ready to shoot.”
As point guard the past two years, Ray has done more facilitating than shooting. A point guard’s primary responsibility each offensive possession is to make sure the team gets off a high-percentage shot without first turning the ball over.
Ray has steadily progressed in that area the past two seasons and during the summers and sometimes that means taking it upon himself to shoot more, such as in the sectional round at home when he went off for 24 points vs. Valparaiso and made five 3-pointers.
But his quick, soft shot from long range was the loudest of multiple factors that made Purdue Northwest University, a member of the NCAA Division II Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, offer him a scholarship that he accepted.
TJ said the PNW coaches were in the stands during the Trojans’ 80-62 loss at Crown Point when he hit a trio of 3-pointers in the second quarter.
“After that game they told me they liked me and they were going to continue to follow me,” Ray said. “Then they had me out to one of their games and I went on a visit sometime in the middle of May and that’s when they offered me. They told me to take my time and let them know when I’m ready.”
Urban announced his point guard’s decision at the Fred Mitchell Chesterton Basketball Golf Fundraiser, news that lifted the moods of even those who lost golf balls at such a fast rate that the best of ball hawks had trouble keeping up.
“His dream was to play college basketball,” Ray’s father said. “He was bound and determined to do it, and he put so much work into it. For him to get a scholarship offer, I could not be happier for him.”
TJ said he looked forward to the recruiting process and learned through experience that Urban was right about it being more stressful than it might first appear. Making a decision before the season allows him to play with a free mind and fully enjoy his senior season.
“Once I started talking to some of the coaches at PNW I just felt like it was right for me and I felt like it’s somewhere I could play but also fit in with everyone,” he said. “I knew Garrett Clark because he played for Portage. I talked to him a lot and he’s a really good dude and a really good basketball player and he just said great things about the coaches. And that's when I decided that I was not going to pass up the opportunity to play at PNW.”
But first he’ll entertain the big crowds at Chesterton for what promises to be another successful season. He will be gunning for leading the Trojans to what would be the school’s eighth sectional title in school history and fifth under Urban, whose .764 winning percentage is fourth-highest among active Indiana high school boys basketball coaches.