Remember Jimmer comet
Flashback Monday
The Front Page
Monday, March 15, 202
By Ken Tingley
Ten years ago the Brigham Young college basketball team was appropriately the center of the Glens Falls universe. It was riding a comet named Jimmer Fredette.
BYU had played at the Glens Falls Civic Center the previous December, giving the hometown faithful a chance to see one of their favorite sons one last time.
Fredette became a regular Sportscenter highlight on ESPN and so big in Provo, Utah that he had to stop going to class for a time. BYU made it to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament before losing in overtime and Fredette would go on to be the national Player of the Year and a first round draft pick in the NBA.
Jimmer never stuck in the NBA and is now playing professionally in China. He got married along the way and has two children.
Here is my column from 10 years ago with Al and Kay Fredette about their son’s magical ride in the spring of 2011.
The Jimmer comet
April 10, 2011
The Post-Star
GLENS FALLS -- The Fredette house is just around the corner from Sanford Street School.
It is part of a typical Glens Falls neighborhood with little more than a body's length separating each home. It is a place where neighbors are family and you raise each other's kids. You could call the blue house nondescript, maybe modest is a better word, but essentially what we are saying here is that it is tiny. It's hard to believe that Al and Kay Fredette raised three kids there.
The house may someday be a basketball log cabin where crazed fans come to see where it all started.
Laugh, if you like, but few thought Jimmer Fredette would ever be a basketball comet - not even his parents - and now Al and Kay have to figure out how to share their youngest child with the rest of the world.
"It is overwhelming," said Al from the small living room where some sort of Jimmer memorabilia is never far from being tripped over.
"I worry about him," said Kay. "I'm always texting him that this is not what life is all about. But he is a pretty level-headed kid. But I don't think he is very comfortable with it."
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“I have not met a person yet in New York politics who has a good relationship with Andrew Cuomo. And I’m not saying ‘close relationship,’ I’m saying ‘good relationship.’ Even people who are close to him I cannot say in good faith have a good relationship with him.”
- Democratic State Senator Alessandra Biaggi who once worked in the Cuomo administration to The New York Times.