Well-traveled Hickey reaches peak of Mapleton record books

NANKIN — Growing up a military brat in multiple countries and on multiple continents, Scotty Hickey spent much of his youth endlessly occupied with basketball.

Anyone looking for proof just needs to track down some of his old neighbors.

“He always wanted to play,” said Hickey’s father, Nick Hickey, who had overseas stops in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Greenland, Germany, England, Japan and Korea while serving 20-plus years in the Air Force. “In England, the families in the neighborhood would say they always knew when Scotty was outside because you could hear the ball bouncing.

“It’s like town homes on the (military) base, and we’d have neighbors come over and say, ‘Do you mind if Scotty would quit dribbling?’

“He’d be in the house and I’d have to come in and say, ‘Hey, I’m super proud of you and I love that you’re working on your dribbling, but we’re starting to (irritate) the neighbors.’ You kind of knew he would always want to play basketball.”

Now a 6-foot senior at Mapleton, Scotty’s neighbors would be happy to know the ceaseless dribbling led to more than just an incessant thumping on the ground.

The All-Ohio shooting guard became the school’s all-time leading scorer in last Tuesday’s home game against Hillsdale. His 31-point night sent him past former MHS record-holder Gage Barone (1,354 points).

Scotty said the record was bittersweet because it came in a loss, but the shot he broke it on — a deep 3-pointer from the right wing in the fourth quarter — was emblematic of the type of shooter he has crafted himself into.

Nick and wife Stephanie moved their family from Japan into the Mapleton area when Scotty was entering sixth grade. Nick grew up in the area, graduating from Ashland High School in 1996.

For the past six years, he’s been the varsity basketball coach for the Mounties, which meant Scotty spent plenty of his time in middle school tossing up shots alongside upperclassmen.

“I wasn’t too hot from the 3-point line in middle school,” Scotty recalled with a laugh. “I used to always work out with the high schoolers here, so the size of the ball was different and it was heavier. All my shots in middle school were long because I was working with a different ball.

“So I kind of developed my high school shot in middle school.”

Despite the minor shooting struggles, classmate and fellow senior guard Joe Foster had an inkling Hickey was bound for a huge career. The two met on the basketball court in sixth grade and have played AAU hoops together almost every year since.

“When he came here, I knew he was going to be good,” Foster said. “A couple times in AAU he’s done some crazy stuff and I remember he had a 30-point game in middle school.”

Nick laughed at Scotty’s mention of the weight differential between the middle school and high school ball. He said he blamed himself for letting his son’s shot get impacted by it, but said it was a bit of a running joke between the two as Scotty continued to grow.

“I would say, ‘Hey, man, if you can shoot the ball, it doesn’t matter what ball it is,’” Nick said with a laugh. “I told him, ‘I’ll throw a BB in the dark through that hoop in a rainstorm, and you’re complaining about the ball being a half-gram lighter. That’s not the shooter’s mentality.’”

No one can say Scotty doesn’t have the shooter’s mentality now.

The senior has built his career around being the go-to guy on the floor for the Mounties and will be the leading scorer on the squad for the third straight season.

He has started all but three games since his freshman year, and no outing better foreshadowed what has become of his career than the opening night of his sophomore campaign.

“The night before that, I didn’t sleep at all,” Scotty said. “I was just wide awake talking to my dad pretty much the whole night; I was having sweats that night because I was so excited (for the season to start).”

Playing at Black River, the Mounties lost a 92-89 barn-burner in triple-overtime to the Pirates.

Scotty, however, was nothing short of scintillating.

The sophomore made 16 shots from the field — including 8-of-13 from 3-point range — and was 8-of-9 from the free-throw line to finish with 48 points.

It broke a 51-year-old Mapleton scoring record held by Steve Ringler (45 points against Plymouth in 1971) and is the third-highest scoring game ever for a Firelands Conference player.

The only players to outdo that total since the FC’s inception in 1960 were Plymouth’s Brook Turson in 2008 (51 against St. Peter’s) and Western Reserve’s Mike Hyde in 1963 (51 against Monroeville).

Nick said they were so frustrated about losing to Black River that they didn’t even realize the magnitude of Scotty’s numbers until they actually took the time to look at the scorebook at home.

His older son, Mason Hickey, was an assistant coach at the time.

“I knew he was feeling good and had it going offensively, but I didn’t know it was 48,” Nick said.

“So we got into the locker room and Mason goes, ‘Dad, Scotty had a night.’ And his eyes were really big. I was thinking he maybe scored 30.”

Scotty has made the 40-point game an annual thing since then. He dropped 44 points in a home game last season against Rittman, then had 40 this year at Monroeville.

When he surpassed 1,000 career points in this year’s opener against Open Door Christian, he had 36.

Some of his talent is a byproduct of being part of a basketball-obsessed family. Mason played and Scotty’s older sister, Sara, also was an All-Ohioan for the Mounties, tying the school record for 3-pointers in a game (six).

Younger sister Reagan is getting solid minutes this winter as a freshman for an MHS team that is 16-5.

“I just let the game come to me,” Scotty said. “If it’s my night, it’s my night. If it’s not my night, I trust in my guys to hit their shots.”

It’s the kind of talent that keeps fans wondering what he could do next, and it should be no surprise, considering the unique ways — and places — in which he’s honed his craft.

Scotty was born at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and his early years were spent in England, Japan and Germany.

Nick said initially everything he focused on with his son in basketball revolved around post work because learning the footwork required to play in the paint translates to everything else.

While he spent his third- through fifth-grade years in Japan, Scotty was surrounded by really good guards while playing a few years above his grade level.

“That ball moves — it’s fast,” Scotty said of his time in Japan. “It’s a beautiful art over there.”

Bringing all that knowledge back to America with him as a sixth-grader was nothing if not unique.

“Their youth level in Japan played off international rules, so they had a shot clock,” Nick said. “So you’ve got third- and fourth-grade kids playing with a shot clock, which speeds the game up.”

As his game continued to evolve at the varsity level, Scotty’s range got deeper beyond the arc. At the same time he was refining his ability to get to the basket.

“Hickey has worked to be that athletic, that strong, that quick, that explosive,” Western Reserve coach Chris Sheldon said earlier this season, “and he can score at all three levels — the 3, the floater and at the front of the rim.”

Alongside talented 2024 Mapleton graduate Kyle Sloter, who became the program’s second-ever 1,000-point scorer last winter, Hickey and the Mounties put together a breakthrough campaign in 2023-24.

Their 16 wins were the most for the program since 1981-82, and they won a sectional title for the first time since 2007.

This season, Mapleton is 10-8 overall, marking the first time since 1982 that the program has had three consecutive seasons with double-digit wins.

“We’ve always had a goal to change the culture here to a winning culture, and honestly, just having fun while playing basketball,” Scotty said. “We’ve met a lot of great guys playing here, made a lot of friendships.”

One aspect of his game that Foster said has had a huge impact on the entire MHS program is his deep-shooting capability.

Building the strength to pull up from well beyond the arc was a big focus entering his sophomore year, and Foster said plenty of Mounties have followed in his footsteps in recent seasons.

“He definitely brought (more shooting range) to our team,” Foster said. “We never really started taking deeper shots until he started doing it. All of us take pretty deep shots now and he’s the pioneer of that.”

The long-range talent shows in the numbers.

Hickey is on pace to break the Mapleton record for 3-pointers in a season for the third straight year. He’s already got the school standard for career triples with 181 (22 as a freshman, 51 as a sophomore, 56 last year and 52 this year).

On Thursday night at St. Paul, he broke Clint Rickett’s school mark for single-season scoring (was 444 in 1992-93, Scotty has 456 this season), and his 25.3 points per game this year are ahead of Rickett’s MHS record of 21.2 from that same season.

Among the eight current boys basketball teams in the Firelands Conference (which have been the same since 1992-93), Scotty’s 1,421 career points rank eighth all-time. Both he and Crestview senior record-breaker Justice Thompson (1,432 through Thursday) are pushing to join the 1,500-point club by season’s end.

Despite all that, Nick said what will stick with him is Scotty’s ability to be a quiet leader.

“He doesn’t do anything where he’s vocal or yelling a lot,” Nick said. “What I’ll remember the most is just how he’s been able to drag other kids to want to play basketball with him.

“They just kind of do what he does in the weight room and coming in to get shots up on random nights.”

Assuming he’s able to compete in track this spring, Scotty will finish his time in high school with 12 varsity letters — four each in basketball, golf and track. He’s a sprinter and state-qualifying high jumper and has drawn interest from college track coaches, but he said he would love to continue his basketball career.

At this point, however, he hasn’t been in conversation with any college hoops coaches.

“(College basketball) has always been the dream,” he said, “but my future’s in God’s hands right now.”

With a minimum of six high school games left, Hickey will look to add on to his numbers. But he said stacking up wins while continuing to make memories with his friends is his driving force.

“I’ll remember all the great times we’ve had with each other, the great relationships we’ve made,” he said. “And that’s not just gonna stop here — friendships are for a lifetime.

“But winning together is nice. … Right now, we’re playing like every game’s our last game.”