Timon’s Jaiden Harrison approaches WNY scoring record he was raised to shoot for

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Before setting sight on Western New York’s all-time scoring record, Jaiden Harrison bore wide-eyed witness to local basketball lore in the upstairs gym at Gloria J. Parks Center on Main Street.

“I probably saw every one of the best players from the city come through the Gloria J,” recalled Harrison, now a 6-foot-3 senior guard for Bishop Timon-St. Jude in South Buffalo. “Starting from when I was 8 years old, my dad worked there for the men’s leagues. I’d get shots up at halftime, whenever I could. And I sat on the side, watching all the greats.”

Harrison recognized their games before their names, but his father made sure he understood the history. He knew when he was in the presence of his future coach Jason Rowe, the only area player to ever score 2,000 points and dish 1,000 assists as a state champion point guard for Traditional, or Ritchie Campbell, the Burgard sensation whose 2,335 points stood as WNY’s record for 27 years before being broken by Cheektowaga’s Dominick Welch in 2017.

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“Dom Welch was one of those players that came through the Gloria J that I first remember thinking of him as a Buffalo legend,” Harrison said. “I saw him score all those points, and I’m wondering how does he do that.”

With 2,361 points in six high school seasons, Harrison has surpassed Campbell (2,355) and wil soon overtake Welch (2,376) atop WNY’s boys basketball career list. Harrison, who has scored 1,528 points in three years at Timon, averaging 21 an outing, needs 16 to break the record. Timon, ranked No. 2 in town, plays at No. 1 Canisius on Friday night, before wrapping up the regular season in the Tigers Jungle on Monday against Cardinal O’Hara.

“It’s amazing and really a special thing to see,” said Rowe, now coaching at Timon after playing 16 professional seasons.

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As stoic on the sideline as he was when he played, Rowe fought back tears last week watching Harrison make a foul shot to match his career point total (2,286). “When he hit the second free throw,” displacing Rowe in WNY’s all-time top five, the coach stepped on the floor and said, “I love you, kid.”

“I know how special this is,” said Rowe, who was third all-time in 1996 after leading Traditional to a state championship, buckets below teammate Damien Foster (2,324), the high scorer Harrison overtook this week.

“I’ve been a part of it myself,” Rowe said. “I heard the stories about Ritchie Campbell. I played with Damien. I watched Dom break the record when I came home from overseas. You don’t think about it at the time you’re playing. But 30 years later, when your name is still part of the legacy, it’s special. And now to be along for the ride and have a part in Jaiden’s journey has been awesome.”

Prior to Friday night’s home game, Harrison and Rowe received framed pictures inscribed: “When the student surpasses the teacher, there is pride, there is respect, there is love!”

The keepsakes were presented by Kim MacKinnon, a retired Buffalo Public Schools teacher and coach whose volunteering in the basketball gym begat a guidance counselor position at Timon. She is the daughter of Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame member Bob MacKinnon, the former Yale Cup scoring record holder, who played and coached at Canisius College, before elevating to NBA executive and coaching positions, including with the hometown Braves. Athletic director Matt Weiser calls her “Mama Mac.” Harrison calls her “Grams.”

MacKinnon, who coached girls basketball at South Park for 15 years, scouted Harrison playing on the side with her grandson while the Sparks played in Gloria J summer leagues.

“He still has that same face. Big eyes, wide smile,” MacKinnon said. “And I’ve gotten to know him better each year here at Timon, he’s just a special kid. He’s loving. For being an elite athlete like he is, he has a heart as big as this gym.”

Rowe remembered Harrison jumping in a rec league run as a sixth grader and making jump shots. By then he was an established middle school camp star at Timon, where his brother Joe Harrison III scored over 1,000 points from 2015-17.

“He’s been in the gym his whole life,” said Desmond Randall, the former Timon coach now at Villa Maria College, and also one of Harrison’s coaches in the Corey Graham AAU program. “That’s why him and his brother are two of the best shooters we’ve seen in Western New York. He was coming to Timon the whole time, and I was looking forward to coaching him from the first time I saw him play in fifth grade.”

Unable to play Monsignor Martin basketball as a middle-schooler, Harrison started his varsity career at West Seneca East. He started at point guard in eighth grade, and faced box-and-one defenses as a freshman, scoring 833 points in three seasons before transferring to Timon.

“He was the best shooter on the team in seventh grade,” said Randall, having coached against Harrison during his time at West Seneca West. “My last year there, they upset us, and Jaiden was a big part of that.”

Harrison sought to expand his floor game at Timon, guided by Rowe’s mastery of the point guard position, which sometimes includes on-court demonstrations. Giving Gloria J flashbacks, “Rowe hops in practice and cooks us up,” Harrison said.

“My job was to make him into a leader,” Rowe said. “We all knew how he could shoot it, and get to the basket to score. His shooting off the dribble is really impressive. But getting him to realize the more he can get everyone else involved, the easier he can score and the more dangerous of a player he can become.”

Randall said Harrison’s court vision has turned into the trait mentioned most by college recruiters on the AAU circuit, where Harrison has received scholarship offers from Division I programs including Fairfield, Furman and Long Island, and D-II Daemen.

“He’s a special talent,” Randall said. “We’ve seen him do special things around here, and he’s done special things against top talent out on the road.

Harrison surpassed 1,000 career points with 500 as a sophomore, and added another 596 as a junior. He averaged 22 for a Timon team that won its first Manhattan Cup in 22 years and reached the Catholic state final last March. Stalking the points record, Harrison has scored a little less (21 ppg) but more efficiently (better than 64% inside the arc, 45% from 3-point range) while raising his assist and rebounding averages over 7.

“We have three of the top players in the area,” Harrison said. Like Rowe at Traditional, he is part of a special talent collective, with junior wingman Nakyhi Harris (21 ppg, 6 rpg), the son of former Niagara Falls superstar Paul Harris, and senior guard Jacob Humphrey (18 ppg, 4 apg, 4 rpg) both prime candidates for the All-WNY team. “Coach Rowe’s teaching me to be a more balanced, unselfish player. Being more of a point guard is what this team needs from me, to go as far as we can. We’re still writing our story, and I feel like we can do something very special.”

In Rowe’s esteem, “that’s what makes Jaiden special, and that’s what makes the record special. Because he’s not aiming for it. He’s never brought it up all season. He’s always looking at the team goal, going out and trying to help us win games.”

“The coaching staff here is phenomenal,” MacKinnon said. “They have worked really hard at developing his skills beyond shooting. The way he plays defense, the way he communicates with his teammates, the way he takes charge and leads. He’s a great influence on the other kids. And he takes his role very seriously.”

Harrison said he feels “blessed and gracious that all the work has paid off.” Eagerly awaiting the Manhattan Cup playoffs, Harrison is approaching his climb to the top of WNY’s all-time scoring list as it comes.

“When you work for it and spend all that time in the gym, you’ve already visualized it and manifested it in your mind,” he said. “So it’s like I’m living it again.”

WNY boys basketball career scoring leaders

Updated 2/15/24, *active

Jaiden Harrison year-by-year scoring

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Jonah Bronstein joined the WIVB squad in 2022 as a digital sports reporter. The Buffalonian has covered the Bills, Sabres, Bandits, Bisons, colleges, high schools and other notable sporting events in Western New York since 2005, for publications including The Associated Press, The Buffalo News, and Niagara Gazette. Read more of his work here.

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