The young man with a plan: Grant (Boo) Vermeer

Like many others, 2013 Bellarmine backcourter Grant (Boo) Vermeer has ambitious ideas for after college, accordingly so for someone garnering the attention of schools like Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech and the like. But despite his relative youth, he could already be making a living just by advising his fellow high school student-athletes on a game plan for garnering an athletic scholarship.

Vermeer's approach is one of preparation and execution on and off the court  and it is already paying personal dividends. To borrow an on-court phrase, he's got game in the department of making-yourself-known-to-recruiters.

With the assistance of Tim Burke of Live Recruit Academic, he built a recruiting web page. Vermeer, who carries a 4.0+ grade point average, then mapped out a spring and summer raise-your-recognition strategy, writing letters and sending them out to colleges that have captured HIS interest.

Those included such academic heavyweights as MIT, Amherst and Williams back on the east coast. Plus, he attended a summer basketball camp at Harvard where he was noticed by the Harvard Assistant Coach Yanni Hufnagel who stays in touch. Vermeer has also enjoyed communications with Yale, Bucknell, Tulane, Army, USF, USD, Catholic, Rice and others.

He has enjoyed informative unofficial visits at MIT, Amherst, Cal Tech, Occidental and Pomona College and this public relations go-around will have an emphasis on Bay Area schools.

So who is Vermeer and what are his particulars?

His early hoops interest was sparked by his father and also his older brother Kyle. The latter played basketball at Bellarmine (and is now attending Stanford) and turned down an offer to play at MIT in order to attend Stanford where he plays on the Club Basketball level.

Vermeer explained, "I love the team aspect of basketball , the sense of family away from family, being like brothers. Plus, the constant uptempo with something always happening. It's always intense unlike football where there are 30 seconds between plays."

Speaking of the gridiron, Vermeer was a quarterback on the Bellarmine varsity. "I got pulled up to the varsity during my sophomore season." His playing time included major minutes in the Bells' loss to Palo Alto in the Central Coast CIF playoffs.

But basketball has won out.

"Football was great, I loved it a ton," Vermeer offered, "but I've grown up loving basketball and want to play it in college."

So now his focus in on the court.

He played on Coach Scot Alexander's High Intensity basketball club until Alexander moved over this season to the girls side of the equation in order to coach his daughter Cymia, a freshman at East Side Prep.

It was recommended that Vermeer join up with the D’Angelo Zamora’s Oakland Kings. The Kings are coached by Darnell McCulloch who grew up in Oakland and played college ball in the mid-1970s for Jerry Tarkanian when the latter ran the Fresno State program.

How did that work out?

Coming into the spring and summer as primarily a catch-and-shoot long distance marksman, Vermeer shot well while developing his dribble-drive prowess. He and teammate JoJo Zamora (Serra High) earned Co-Most Valuable Player Honors in an Easter tournament in Las Vegas in which the Kings won their division. One Vermeer highlight was a contest in which he buried seven treys.

So now it's back to Bellarmine and Coach Patrick Schneider's program. The Bells went 16-12, 8-7 last season in the very competitive West Catholic Athletic League and Vermeer is thinking positively. "We're going to be young with five or six juniors will be playing a lot of minutes but I like to think optimistically." He noted that fellow guard Blair Mendy will be someone to watch. But so will Vermeer who sank 40% of his three-point attempts last season and led the team in scoring many games as a sophomore starter.

Another aspect of his young life that connects to his familial sense on the court is that the Vermeer family have been foster parents to seven children throughout the years. "I love helping out with the kids," he said. "In fact, three came over for breakfast on Sunday and we were able to catch up."

Yes, don't be surprised if a Grant Vermeer LLC entity sometime in the future. It's likely to have something to do with kids and college recruiting but you can bet it will be consummately actualized.

Here is a just-under-six-minute video of Vermeer in the 2010 season.