Chinle's Clauschee works to involve his teammates

It's hard to think 6-foot-3 Chinle senior Koyai Clauschee's nickname was once "Little Lamb."

But when he played basketball for the first time at the age of 8, his coach referred to him by that name.

"My third-grade year I played for the Bad Boyz 12-and-under basketball league," Clauschee said. "Back then my coach used to call me a Little Lamb because when I was on the court I was running around all lost. I wasn't that good at basketball."

But 10 years later, Koy, as he is called, is better than good and may be one of the best basketball players to pass through the high school's program.

He has become a leader for one of the top five teams in Arizona 3A basketball.

"He's the one we go to when we need to go over the hump," Chinle head coach Ned Curley said. "As a player I think he's really a special player, he never backs down."

Curley has watched Koy grow into the player he is today. As a freshman he coached Clauschee on the junior varsity team and for the last three years on the varsity.

"He has the tenacity to score points," Curley said. "He doesn't struggle. It's more like a natural thing for him to do.

"He's coming around on his defensive side, just going out and trying to play with a lot of intensity," he added.

His uses his offensive ability to get his teammates involved. "He's not that type of a player who wants to score all the points," Curley said. "He gets his other guys involved, his other teammates."

Sharing is a concept Koy said he learned early in his basketball career.

"It just can't be one person that everyone has to rely on," Clauschee said. "My friends from other schools talk about, well, yeah, I scored this much.

"It's just something I've learned," he said. "Defense wins games and offense sells tickets. You just can't rely on scoring and you can't rely in one person."

Sharing the spotlight is something his mother, Jennifer Clauschee, is thankful for.

"He wants everybody to be in there scoring," she said. "There was one game he kind of came back and scored high and he didn't feel good about that. He wants everybody excelling on the team and that's part of his leadership. I think that's kind of neat."

Curley said it's also his off-court interests that make him unique.

"We always supported our kids," Jennifer said. "If they wanted to skateboard then they skateboarded. He (Koy) is just interested in a lot of different things."

His parents weren't surprised when Koy wanted to start a food drive for the people in Haiti or a coat drive for those in need in his community. Although he was unable to carry them out they were his ideas.

"His leadership he shows on the floor and on the court but in the public eye they only see him as a player," Curley said. "In the public eye he's willing to extend a hand and help out. He won't turn anybody down. He comes from a real good family and I'm sure they extend that in him."

A senior with dreams to someday play college basketball, his father and Chinle's girls basketball coach Darrell Clauschee said his son has taken on the responsibility of reaching out to colleges.

"Over Christmas break and for an early graduation gift we got him a computer and we got him a video camera so he could tape his games," Darrell said. "And what's he's doing right now is trying to sell himself to the local colleges and out-of-state schools."

For the last two years Koyai said he's had a 4.0 GPA. He hopes to attend Grand Canyon University to major in business management.

"He's always played hard because being with older kids I think he realized at a young age he's got to earn his spot," his mother said. "I think he took that very seriously ... He was always the one that would be out there in the cold with a beanie and gloves on playing basketball, shooting around."

The second youngest in the family, Koy has an older half sister, an older brother and a younger sister.

"He's fun loving yet hard working and, yeah, he's pretty adventurous, he likes to try new things," Jennifer Clauschee said. "His friends are just not the basketball team, he has friends from cross country...they're just kind of fun loving and kind of crazy. He's unique and he likes to be unique. He's got a good heart."

And that might be the real reason he will always known as Little Lamb.

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