Adou Thiero's parents came to America to chase a dream. Now he has his own bright future

As 17-year-old Adou Thiero makes his way through Concourse A of Baltimore’s BWI International Thurgood Marshall Airport on a recent Tuesday, he looks every bit the part of a sought-after Division I college basketball prospect.

The 6-foot-5 athlete sports a black hoodie and joggers, Air Jordan 4s and a Nike Elite backpack bearing the logo of his high school, Quaker Valley, about 30 minutes outside Pittsburgh. He’s taken this flight to visit his third college in two weeks, his hard-earned dream of playing college ball just on the horizon.

In more ways than one, Adou Thiero has arrived.

But there’s another flight from Adou’s past that shapes this moment as well.

Back then, he was just two months old, a baby sleeping in his father’s lap headed for Mali, the West African home country of his parents, Almamy Thiero and Mariam Sy.

Back then, basketball was their dream, too.

They had come from Mali to America to help their families back home; they were young, with promising basketball careers. To chase the dream, they made the heart-breaking decision to send Adou to live with his grandmother.

But this is what they couldn’t know then: that Adou would soon return to America to his parents. That their dream of supporting their family would soon shift, from excelling on the basketball court to encouraging their children to find dreams of their own.

And that one day, Adou Thiero’s talent and ambition would bring his family’s dreams full circle.

‘It happened for a reason’

Adou Thiero is a little more than a month removed from having put together one of the most impressive high school basketball seasons by an individual in Western Pennsylvania in recent memory.

As a senior guard at Quaker Valley, he averaged 23.3 points, 10.3 rebounds, 5.9 assists, 3.9 steals and 2.3 blocks per game to lead the Class 4A Quakers to a Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League title and a Pennsylvania state title game appearance.

He is still unranked on 247Sports and other mainstream college basketball recruiting sites, but with Division I offers from Kentucky, Maryland, Pitt, Cincinnati, Xavier and Duquesne, among others, he’ll practically handpick the college of his choice in the coming weeks.

Adou’s parents, too, had basketball in their blood. They’d met in Mali through basketball circles and immigrated to the United States separately — Almamy in 1999; Mariam in 2000 — with hopes of one day using basketball to improve the financial circumstances of their families back home.

Almamy Thiero was one of the top power forward prospects in the high school Class of 2002 and played for legendary coach John Calipari at Memphis for four seasons before spending his final collegiate season at Duquesne in 2006-07. Mariam Sy was a star at NAIA Oklahoma City University before being drafted No. 33 overall in the 2006 WNBA Draft by the Washington Mystics.

But while still dating, and in the middle of their collegiate careers, 20-year-old Almamy and 24-year-old Mariam learned they were going to be parents. They made the agonizing decision to let Almamy’s mother in Mali care for Adou for a few years while they worked to chase their dream on the court.

It was hard then, said Mariam, now 42; it’s hard now.

“Your first baby,” she said, voice heavy with emotion, “you know, you just let him go.”

It was the summer before her second-to-last collegiate season at Oklahoma City in July 2004. The 6-foot-4 star center was alone in her on-campus apartment, overcome with emotion. She’d go on that winter to average more than 16 points and nine rebounds per game to help her team get to the NAIA national championship game.

But all she could think about then was her son. The grief that day, she believed, would kill her.

In the living room, she found the camcorder she’d used to capture moments with her newborn baby.

“I took the camera out and started watching, laughing, crying at the same time,” Mariam recalled.

Next thing she knew, it was daytime. The videos of her son had carried her through the endless night.

The rewards for their sacrifice, though, would be short-lived.

After four seasons at Memphis in which Almamy — a 6-foot-9 forward — played 134 total minutes and suffered a fractured tibia, torn ACL and blood clots, he had transferred to Duquesne for his final year of eligibility. But the blood clots returned mid-season. And this time, they were near his heart. His career was over.

“I never lost faith,” said Almamy Thiero, who at 38 is still on blood thinners today. “I’m like, ‘It happened for a reason.’”

The end of his career brought a new chapter for the couple, who had married soon after Adou’s birth: In March 2007, nearly three years after Almamy carried Adou to Mali, he brought him back home to America.

Almamy soon discovered a new love in coaching — and in being a father. In Adou’s first year back in the U.S., Almamy founded his Western Pennsylvania-based AAU organization, now called College Basketball Prospects of America. Three-year-old Adou was always close by, rarely without a ball in his own small hands.

By 2009, Mariam Sy, who’d been drafted by the WNBA’s Mystics three years prior, decided to step away from basketball, too. She’d suffered two knee injuries, and in September 2007 she’d given birth to her second child, Adou’s sister Mimi (who is now a 6-foot-2 eighth-grader poised to leave her own mark on the basketball world). She and Almamy would eventually add two more children to their family, with Yassa, born in 2015, and Nadiya, born in 2019.

Almamy and Mariam, then having set down roots in the Emsworth suburb of Pittsburgh, coached teams and players through Almamy’s AAU club and at local K-12 private school Sewickley Academy. The kids ranged from kindergarteners to seniors in high school, and when groups were short a player during scrimmages or pick-up games, Adou volunteered to sub in.

As a kindergartner, he played with the third-graders; by the next year, he joined the fourth-graders.

“At an early age, I was kind of a gym rat just because (my dad) was in the gym all the time,” Adou said. “So, I was in the gym, too. And I just took that and was just always trying to improve my game.”

As Adou instinctively gravitated toward basketball, his parents, of course, hoped he’d find success. But they wanted him to be fueled by his own desire, not theirs.

“It was very satisfying to see him even pick up a basketball and say, ‘I want to be a basketball player,’” said Almamy. “He was out here working on his skills and you could see the drive. You could see, ‘Hey, this kid wants to be a basketball player.’”

Adou’s parents’ humble upbringings taught them the value of hard work and determination, and it influenced their parenting and the values they looked to instill in him.

As one of 10 children in his family, Almamy Thiero said there were times when he didn’t know where his next meal would come from. When he started playing basketball, his family couldn’t afford to buy him athletic gear. He’d cut up cardboard boxes, using the pieces as insoles in his ripped sneakers so his feet wouldn’t touch the concrete when he trained and played basketball outdoors.

Almamy told his players: Work hard. Honor your parents’ sacrifices. “Don’t just go in thinking everything’s going to be handed to you. No one’s going to hand you jack. You’ve got to go earn it.”

He told Adou, too.

And Adou Thiero listened.

‘You’ve got to work, work, work’

Even years after Almamy’s playing career was over, he and Coach Calipari maintained a relationship. And the summer before Adou entered fourth grade, Almamy took him to a youth basketball camp at Kentucky — where Calipari had taken over as head coach in 2009. Calipari was impressed right away with how advanced Adou’s skills were at such a young age, primarily his ball-handling.

Calipari was further intrigued when Adou went to his second Kentucky basketball camp in 2018 during the summer before his freshman year of high school. This time, the Hall-of-Famer told his former player: “At some point, I’m gonna recruit him.”

Almamy Thiero beamed with pride.

“I was like, ‘Well, he said that, but you’ve also got to push yourself and get to that level,’” Mariam recalled reminding her son. “‘You’re good in middle school right now, but now you’ve got high school. So let’s take baby steps.’”

Even as ahead of his years as Adou’s skillset was, Almamy refused to take him to national recruiting events. He feared that sort of atmosphere would potentially derail Adou’s path, either by allowing him to draw unhealthy comparisons between himself and other elite players around the country or by making him complacent from receiving too much praise from talent evaluators.

“We firmly believe you’ve got to work, work, work, and your hard work will pay off,” Almamy explained. “And people will see what you put in.”

Adou understands the logic. But he admitted that, as a younger kid, he would’ve liked to have played “against top competition” and gotten the “cool gear” from the nationally significant events. Still, the effort he exerted in working on his craft never wavered. The hours spent on the court allowed Adou to carry himself with a confidence and swagger that stuck.

That made a favorable impression on Quaker Valley head coach Mike Mastroianni right away.

In his first time scrimmaging with the Quakers’ varsity team as a rising freshman in the spring of 2018, Adou challenged then-senior star guard Coletrane Washington, who’d go on to play collegiately at Drexel, to a game of one-on-one. After earning his spot on the varsity squad that winter, Adou played in a preseason scrimmage in which he fearlessly attacked the basket — and scored — against Kennedy Catholic big man Oscar Tshiebwe. Tshiebwe was a four-star recruit at the time and went on to be named the 2022 unanimous national player of the year at Kentucky.

“That was the first thing we saw a week into his freshman year,” Mastroianni said. “It was like, ‘Yeah, we need to find a place for him.’”

But being named a starter was only the beginning. Adou Thiero continued to carve out a larger and larger role for himself month by month, season by season.

He led his team in scoring as a sophomore in the 2019-20 season with 17.7 points per game. As a junior, standing at 6-foot-1, he led the Quakers again, upping his scoring average to 21.8 points per game while also averaging team-best marks in assists (5.1), steals (2.2) and blocks (1.2).

Still, the offers didn’t exactly roll in. He earned his first Division I offer in February 2021 from the Northeastern Conference’s Long Island. And, for a while, that was his lone scholarship offer. At the same time, Adou saw other players — in the area and around the country — receive plenty of interest.

“I didn’t really think much of it,” he said. “I’m just thinking, like: ‘Oh, I know I’m better than that person. And when the time comes, I can show it. But I’ve just got to keep my head down and keep grinding until that time comes.’”

After Adou earned the offer from Long Island, he tried to leave no doubt as to why other schools should follow suit. That same February, he dropped 41 points in his team’s win over Ambridge Area. And in Quaker Valley’s last five regular season games in 2021, he scored 30 or more twice and 20 or more four times.

Then, in early March, Adou’s progress came to a screeching halt. In the Quakers’ first-round WPIAL playoff matchup against Derry Area, Adou broke a bone in his left shin after landing awkwardly.

Instead of showing off his talents on the big postseason stage, Adou Thiero’s junior season was over. He rehabilitated his injured leg in isolation while his teammates trained together during that playoff run and over the summer.

Mastroianni often checked on his star player, who had a hard time being away for an extended amount of time from the game he’d grown up playing.

Adou was cleared to return that fall, shortly before the start of the 2021-22 season. But he’d missed a crucial chance to attract college coaches, his mother said.

“It hurt all of us, because we’ve all had (injury) problems,” Mariam said. “So, it was just like, ‘Oh my gosh. Not again.’”

“‘You’re so far,’” she said, “‘and so close at the same time.’”

‘We want what he wants’

The time alone hardened Adou Thiero, physically and mentally.

And he came back on a mission.

Adou set out to return even stronger, to make the most of his final high school season — his final chance to prove to the world that he was indeed a high-major Division I talent. He’d also grown a few more inches, now up to at least 6-foot-4.

“He’d gotten bigger,” Mastroianni recalled. “And now he’s an older player who was really good as a younger player. Now, he’s the oldest guy there. I think it was a combination of all of those (factors).”

When they saw him play, they realized: “‘Whoa, he’s on this whole other level now.’”

Adou quickly started turning heads across Western Pennsylvania.

After scoring what was then a program-record 44 points in January in a win over Hopewell, he scored 40 again later that same month in a victory against Highlands.

“You can take any five-star recruit, four-star recruit, and put him on the court with them,” Almamy Thiero said. “And you will see whatever they can do, he can do the same thing. That’s basketball to me.”

Sure enough, high-major programs began to take notice.

In mid-February, Indiana hosted Adou and his family for an unofficial visit. Then came interest from Marquette, Pitt, Ohio State, and, eventually, Kentucky. Calipari called Almamy in early March to let him know he’d be taking a serious look at his son.

Adou Thiero had the attention of some of the best programs in the country. He’d finally taken a sizable step toward grabbing what he’d been chasing for years.

Still, with Quaker Valley undefeated headed into the PIAA playoffs, Adou kept his focus on what he considered a priority — trying to help his team win a state championship, just weeks after they’d beaten Montour to win a WPIAL crown.

“It’s a great feeling, but I can’t get too caught up in it,” said Adou of the increasing interest Division I programs had begun to display, two days before the Quakers took the floor against Philadelphia’s Neumann-Goretti to play for a state title. “I’ve still got to focus on the main goal at the moment.”

Quaker Valley fell short of its ultimate objective, losing to Neumann-Goretti 93-68 in late March in the Class 4A state championship game. But Adou had a solid outing against one of the most talented high school teams in the country. He finished with 18 points, 10 rebounds, three assists, three blocks and three steals at Hershey’s Giant Center as Calipari and Kentucky assistant coach Orlando Antigua watched from courtside.

Two days after Quaker Valley’s March 24 loss, Calipari visited Adou’s home and offered him a scholarship. In the next two days, Maryland and Pitt made offers, too.

“To be able to work with him throughout and see now that he’s on the right course to accomplish something for himself, it makes us really happy and makes us proud,” Almamy said.

Having taken visits to Kentucky, Maryland, Pitt, Xavier and Duquesne this month, Adou is weighing his options, taking his time. His mother used to motivate him by claiming they wouldn’t pay for him to attend college. Now, they won’t need to.

When Almamy and Mariam immigrated to America more than 20 years ago, they dreamed of using their basketball careers to help their families back home. Now, they recognize how their winding path has helped their children shape their own goals and ambitions.

“Our dream was different,” Mariam said. “As parents, we don’t want to attach our dream to his dream. But our dream was also for him to get to college. And we want what he wants.”

Today, as Adou hustles through airport terminals and strolls college campuses, Almamy — the father who once cradled his infant son on a flight booked in hopes of a brighter future — trails close behind. He takes photos of his boy at this landmark and the next, poses with him in front of others.

“It feels great knowing that I’m able to do something my parents had the chance to do but weren’t able to,” Adou said. “I just want to do my best to try to fulfill it for them.”

Adou chose this dream on his own, but in moments like these his father can’t help but see a younger version of himself. The rewards of the long journey Almamy has taken with Mariam are right here, as he watches his son’s dream take flight.

Contact Parth Upadhyaya at pupadhyaya@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @pupadhyaya_.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Quaker Valley's Thiero chases a dream that his parents can relate to