Kennewick High grad had a strong pro basketball season in Germany

Bryce Leavitt’s faith in himself paid dividends this basketball season before COVID-19 shut down the season.

Leavitt is a 2012 Kennewick High School grad who played college basketball at Washington State University and North Idaho College before finishing up his collegiate career at Seattle Pacific University.

He then played professional basketball in Germany, at Paderborn as a rookie in 2016-17, and at Muenster for the 2017-18 season.

In 2018-19, Leavitt fractured his ankle with Muenster, and had been rehabilitating it at home in the Tri-Cities.

He had hoped his agent could find him an opportunity last fall to go back to Germany.

That happened when a team from Ibbenbueren, TVI Basketball, offered him a contract.

It was a fourth-tier pro league, one step below the league Muenster was in. But it was a chance to prove himself again.

Bringing in Americans from overseas is not necessarily a cheap cost for the team.

“And it was essentially a training camp contract for six weeks,” said Leavitt, now 26. “The only thing I was guaranteed to get paid for was those six weeks of training camp.”

But Leavitt impressed his coaches enough that they signed him for the full season, guaranteeing his deal.

Ibbenbueren’s reward was having Leavitt playing the starting point guard position, leading the team to a 15-9 record, which was good enough for fourth place in the 14-team West Division of the German Regionalliga (regional league).

In 22 games, Leavitt averaged 15.5 points, 7.9 rebounds, and an astounding 7.7 assists.

“I ended up having a really good season,” said Leavitt. “I ended up leading the league in assists.”

But like every sports league, the Regionalliga was shut down.

“Everything for me happened in 72 hours,” said Leavitt. “Essentially, we had a game scheduled for Saturday (March 14). The Tuesday before the game, our coaches said we’d play the game Saturday, but with no spectators.

“The next day, Wednesday, we came to practice and they said the game Saturday was cancelled,” Leavitt continued. “On Thursday when we came to practice, they said the season was cancelled.”

On Friday, March 13, Leavitt got a call from the Ibbenbueren team general manager.

“He’d been working with travel agents,” said Leavitt. “He gave me a couple of options. I could get on a plane and come home the next morning, really in five hours the plane would be leaving. Or I could stay in Germany and wait to come home in May.”

Leavitt took the first option, and 24 hours later – plus two temperature screenings – Leavitt was back in the United States, landing in San Francisco.

He’s now back in Kennewick, trying to rest up from the season.

“Normally when I come back, I do some substitute teaching and train some young athletes,” he said. “But I can’t do either of that right now. So I’m re-charging my body. I go outside and work out. I’ll sit tight for a while.”

Leavitt said Germany seems to be about one to two weeks behind the United States in what’s happening with COVID-19.

“The stores were starting to run out of supplies before I left,” he said.

As for next season, Leavitt will likely be back in Europe.

“I’m pretty open to any country,” he said. “But I think the fast track for me is Germany. All of the coaches and scouts in Germany know me.

“(The German pro basketball community is) a pretty small world over there.”

Notes

• The football offers keep coming in for Kamiakin running back Tuna Altahir. The University of Idaho is the latest, and it’s Altahir’s fifth offer so far.

• Altahir’s teammate, wide receiver Woodley Downard, also received an offer from Idaho. That gives him two, both from Big Sky Conference schools. Eastern Washington University has also extended Downard an offer.

• Scorebook Live Washington, a website that covers high school sports around the state, says it will come out soon with what would have been its prep softball preseason polls in the next few days. As a teaser, it released who the No. 1 teams in each classification would have been.

For Class 4A, it was going to be Richland.

• The Tri-City Americans were unable to hold their annual season awards ceremony, but they did release their team awards this week.

Sasha Mutala was the big winner, earning the Most Three-Stars award, the Offensive Player of the Year award, and the big one, the Team MVP award.

Luke Zazula was named the team’s Defensive Player of the Year.

Connor Bouchard picked up two honors: the Todd Klassen Humanitarian of the Year award, and the Hardest Working Player of the Year.

Two players, Marc LaJoie and Edge Lambert, tied for Rookie of the Year honors.

Sam Huo was named Most Sportsmanlike Player, and Landon Roberts earned the Scholastic Player of the Year honors.

• More Western Hockey League news: the league announced earlier this week that the playoffs are canceled.

• The WHL granted 14-year-old Connor Bedard of North Vancouver, British Columbia, exceptional player status on Tuesday, which means Bedard can play full-time in the WHL next year as a 15-year-old (one year earlier than normal).

Bedard is the seventh player to ever be granted this status, but the first player in the WHL.

The idea is that he’ll be challenged and become a better player in the WHL, rather than staying down in his current junior league.

Normally, the age minimum to play in the WHL full-time is 16.

On Wednesday, the Regina Pats won the lottery for the first pick in next month’s WHL Bantam Draft, likely meaning that’s where Bedard will be headed.

The Tri-City Americans will select fourth.

• Hanford High grad Shane Martin, now pitching at Columbia Basin College, was named what is likely the last NWAC Pitcher of the Week of the 2020 season this past week.

Martin, a sophomore, leads the NWAC with three victories, and he has a 1.17 earned run average and 24 strikeouts in 23 innings of work.

“Shane has only given up runs in one of his three starts,” said CBC head coach Stefan McGovern. “Shane continues to be a force in the NWAC and looks to continue his success at Northwest Nazarene University.”