Cooley joins 1K point club

On Jan. 24 at Davis County ( Bloomfield), Clarke junior Jack Cooley needed 29 points to reach 1,000 in his basketball career, and 29 was exactly the number he netted.

“It made for a good road trip,” said Clarke boys basketball head coach Michael Fischels of Jack reaching 1,000 points.

Jack started playing basketball in the fifth grade, on traveling teams with many of the same teammates who he plays with today. He said that a couple of the dads ran the teams, and they traveled to different leagues around the area to play against. In high school, he started his basketball career on the varsity team, which helped him to reach that 1,000 point mark as a junior, as point counting begins once a player plays at the varsity level.

“It’s not everyday where you see a talent level that can start as a freshman,” said Fischels.

Jack is only the third Clarke Indian to reach 1,000 career points (according to available records); junior Brad Burgus in the 2005-06 season was the first to reach 1,000, and senior Troy Morgan in the 2016-17 season was the second.

“It’s a career accomplishment, pretty big when somebody does hit it,” said Fischels, who noted that Jack still has a whole season of games left to play.

On reaching the 1,000 point mark, Jack said,

“None of this is possible without the teammates. If you do watch film, we’re a team out there, we’re one playing altogether, a lot of us have been playing all together since 5th grade, we’re really close…we play as one. If I didn’t have those guys, I couldn’t do any of the accomplishments I’ve done.”

In addition to the 29 points at Davis County, Jack went nine for 15 at the free throw line, had 15 rebounds and eight assists; his current season stats show him with 334 points, a 51.3% field goal percentage and 64.5% free throw percentage.

Aside from basketball, Jack is on the football team where he plays quarterback, and plans to try out for golf this year. He hopes to continue his basketball career post-high school, and currently plays for Kingdom Hoops, an AAU basketball club out of Ankeny. The team travels around during the summer months for games, and he also attends camps during the summer that give him a chance to get in front of different coaches.

Jack is the son of Jim and Marcy Cooley of Osceola.