By PAUL GOTHAM
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — It happened between games of an AAU tournament when they were 9 and 10 years old. Looking for something to do with their down time, teammates Justus Ross-Simmons and Darren Blocker, Jr. headed for a nearby pond. Blocker’s dad had fishing poles in his Jeep.
For the first time, together, the current East High duo wet a line.
“I feel like we didn’t catch anything,” Blocker said with a smile.
“We didn’t,” a laughing Ross-Simmons quipped.
The lack of success off the court that day hasn’t stopped them. Now seven-plus years later, their interest in fishing and hunting has evolved. So too have their abilities on the court.
At some point in the next couple days, their time playing scholastic sports will come to an end, but the friendship between Blocker and Ross-Simmons is as close as the next fishing hole.
“We throw lines wherever there’s water,” Ross-Simmons said matter-of-factly.
It was a matter of time before Blocker and Ross-Simmons met. Two young athletes with a similar interest in the game of basketball. They didn’t realize their families already had connections.
Blocker’s dad, Darren Sr., and Ross-Simmons’s mother, Kanika Moxley, worked together earlier in their careers at Lifetime Assistance. Moxley left the job to attend nursing school. Ten years later, they reconnected during an AAU tournament at McQuaid. The bond was formed between the two families.
The friendship of the two boys began.
“My mom knew his dad from way back and they never put it together,” Ross-Simmons said. “Somehow we ended up on the same basketball team. I just went to his house after the game.”
“My dog was chasing him around,” Blocker recalled. “We were just in the driveway.”
Fishing and hunting have been at the center since then.
“That was before we started using lures and stuff,” Blocker said. “That was when we were fishing with live bait, and if we didn’t have live bait we were like ‘we don’t even want to go.’”
Like learning balance of hands on the court, the duo has also made the progression from using live bait to plastics, rigs and the like. They transition from spin cast setups to bait-cast. Blocker has even donned waders and taken to streams where he fly fishes.
It’s not just that they spend time alongside or on the water, but it’s how they do it. To that end, it’s YouTube videos from AP Bassing, Andrew Flair and Jon B. instead of binging on Netflix or Hulu or spending time watching Glee or Ginny and Georgia.
“We started watching a lot of fishing shows, and none of them were using worms,” Blocker stated. “We were like we gotta figure something out.”
The efforts have produced results. Not that Blocker can prove it with measurements.
“I can never seem to find my scale when it’s time to weigh a fish,” he said shaking his head. “I have it at all other times, though, when I’m not weighing anything. When it’s time to weigh a fish and I’m not trying to keep him out of the water for too long, I never can find it.”
Pictures, though, they have plenty of those. From largemouth bass to steelhead and more with both taking photos for the other.
When it comes to game fish like largemouth bass, it’s catch and release. With sunfish, that’s different. It’s meal time when they catch panfish.
“If we’re hungry, it’s even more fun,” Blocker said.
With fishing has also come hunting.
“I never went hunting up here until I started going over to his house,” Ross-Simmons said. “My family owns a farm down south (Mississippi) where I hunt snakes and squirrels.”
Muskrats have become an enemy of sorts.
“They dig holes and mess up the ponds,” Blocker noted. “You can’t even see the holes. You’re trying to walk along the banks and fish. Then you step in a hole and your whole ankle twists. If we see something while we’re fishing that is shootable, something is getting shot.”
The competition doesn’t just stay on the court.
“Sometimes we go for who gets the bigger fish or who gets the most,” Ross-Simmons explained. “Most times it’s the bigger because we know at the pond what we’re going to catch. Sometimes I win. Most times he wins because he cheats.”
Like the time they were fishing with bait-cast rigs and cottonwood from nearby trees settled in the water. The tree fibers caught in the reel Ross-Simmons was using.
“It messed up my whole line, and I had to sit out while I was trying to untangle it,” he recalled. “He’s still fishing!”
Then there was the time in Churchville.
“I was winning and out of nowhere this man catches a catfish. That was like, wow!”
“It was mad big,” Blocker said of his catch.
VIEW MORE CHRISTOPHER WASHINGTON PHOTOS HERE.
Growing up with basketball
Blocker’s mom, Marlene (List) starred at Greece Athena before continuing her career at Chapel Hill with the University of North Carolina. His cousin Kidtrell (Bishop Kearney) plays at Tennessee Prep and has received Division I offers from Kansas State, UNLV, St. Bonaventure and Canisius to name a few. There is also family friend Roosevelt Bouie.
“I’ve known Roosevelt my whole life,” Blocker said of the former Kendall High and Syracuse University star. “He was always coming over to the house since I was a baby. He’s been a big influence, always teaching me stuff.”
Ross-Simmons’s brother, Tomas Vazquez-Simmons played four years at Canisius College. His brother Jake Simmons starred at Buffalo State. Vazquez-Simmons set a Canisius program record with 273 career blocks. Jake Simmons averaged 20.5 points over 81 games with the Bengals.
“When I was younger, I used to watch both of their games,” Ross-Simmons said. “I put both together, and that’s how I play.”
Overcoming setbacks and getting to this season
Blocker missed all of his freshman and sophomore seasons (then at McQuaid Jesuit) because of ACL surgeries. He played sparingly his junior year before transferring to East for his senior year. Ross-Simmons also attended McQuaid before making the move to East High for his sophomore year. A broken tibia shortened his freshman season, and lingering effects from that injury kept him out of the post-season a year ago.
Ross-Simmons knows his future is on the gridiron. The East Eagle star has had contact with the coaching staffs at Rutgers and Syracuse University as well as Albany, Columbia, Cornell, Monmouth and Stony Brook.
“My brothers are good in basketball, the 6-foot-4 guard said. “They broke records at their colleges. But I do not have the looks they had in basketball. I have the looks they had but for football.”
Blocker will be heading to Prep School when his time at East is finished. He has interest from UNC-Charlotte, Hampton University, Niagara, Siena, Wagner and Virginia Tech, but the 6-foot-8 forward knows he needs to make up for lost time.
“I had to put in two times as much work just to be able to play,” he said of the recovery from his injuries. “I had to put in that extra work (for the injuries) and then to get better at the game.”
Neither were on the court when East defeated NE Douglass for the 2020 A2 title, and the timing of their injuries has kept the two from playing together on a high school team. That is until now. They are part of an East High squad that is currently the No. 1 seed in Section V Class A2.
When their time in high school ends, the duo will play together during the summer AAU. It’s pickup games after that and fishing…always fishing.
“We don’t like being cold, so whenever it’s warm enough we’ll go fishing for sure,” Blocker said. “If that’s next month or in three months. Whenever it’s warm enough, we’ll probably be going fishing.”
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