Throwback: Who the F**K is Johnny Sikiric?

When I was in the 4th grade, I played on the St.Adalbert 5th grade CYO team. I did not play or contribute much more than a few steals, hand full of rebounds and a one single basket. I was the fourth spring shooting guard on a 47-7 team that won the Sectional Championship that season.

Johnny Sikiric was our best player. Shit, he was the best player around for a few miles. He scored well over 1,000 points that year and from what I know, probably more the next year. I literally, to this very moment, remember being on the court and watching him miraculously pass the ball ahead of two guys, run and get it before they turned around, and score a lay-up. We ushered him off our home court after he sank two free throws to win our Christmas tournament. Johnny was kind of quiet, but totally competitive in some ways. I remember watching him play an intense game of paper-maiche table football in the IS 73 cafeteria back in the day.

Basketball was, in fact, in his blood. His father was always around, helping out and giving us pointers. His oldest brother, Andrew, didn't play a lick of high school ball at Archbishop Molloy in four years, but he managed to be named to the All-Star team of the Hudson Valley Athletic Conference at tiny St. Jospeh's College in Brooklyn. As was his brother Steven, who was Molloy's best player as a senior after being cut three years in a row. And then, they had a little cousin that was really nice, naturally.

When it came time for Johnny to go to high school, Molloy was well aware of him. He played on the varsity as a sophomore and seemed like he'd be a D1 player. In the end, he chose to stay close to home and took a full ride to D2 Queens College. Johnny also loved baseball and wanted to be able to play both sports, so Queens was a good fit.

I don't know much about his baseball career, but at one point, Johnny was in the top ten in th country in three-point field goal percentage. He averaged 19.6 points as a senior and was named the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association D2 Player of the year.

I'm not quite sure what he's doing right now. He was always pretty smart and hardworking. I do know that he played some pro ball in Macedonia and Slovenia in 2006.

Once when I was in college, I was up late trading CYO hoops battle stories my friend Danny "Dutch" Warshall.

I said. "I played with this one kid, Johnny Sikiric..."

"Sick Ear Rick," Dutch said.

Somehow, we figured out that the St. Adalbert team that Johnny and I played on lost to Danny's CYO team in the Diocese's Championship game that season. Then I remember thinking "How the heck did he remember that kid's game?" and then "He was just that nice."