ST. LOUIS — Usually, it's the big stars from the big schools who get the headlines on the high school sports scene.
But at the typically academic headline-making Metro High School in St. Louis, one basketball player is scoring at a rate too big to ignore.
Senior guard Amari Foluke is the best scorer in the St. Louis area.
He's averaging around 33 points a game this season and led the area in scoring last season as well. But to Foluke, scoring has just turned into an almost-bodily function.
"I just go out there and play hard and have fun. I try not to worry about the statistics; I just go out there and try my best," Foluke said. "Sometimes I just zone everything out. It's not hard to focus, but sometimes the crowd is a little edgy. So, I try to block that out and focus on putting the ball in the basket."
While Metro may not be the usual team making headlines on the high school sports front, Foluke is changing that.
"Since we aren't an established program, people think it's an anomaly, or 'They suck, so he's just getting a bunch of points,'" Metro head coach Tenelle Bufford said. "But he's really quite efficient. He's not ball-hogging; he's just letting the game come to him."
Foluke dropped 36 points, including a first-half, half-court buzzer beater at the game we attended, and he has a career-high game of 48 points from earlier this season.
"He set the scoring record at the Borgia tournament, and that's a 70-year tournament that's been a pretty competitive tournament. He's been seeing triple teams and box-and-ones, and he finds a way to keep pushing forward," Bufford said.
Foluke has accounted for more than half of all of Metro's points so far this year. And when that's the case, you get a target on your back from the opposing team. But it hasn't slowed him down at all.
"I've never seen anybody triple team a guy in high school. And he still comes out with 25 or 37," Bufford said.
But the scoring didn't always come naturally. It's taken hard work, as Foluke has expanded his original shooting touch to develop a more all-around game.
"Even today, he came in at 5 in the morning and is welling to put the work in. He was more of just a shooter and then we started putting work in over the summer, and he's been growing. His confidence is what's most impressive to me. His discipline; he's a 3.8 student. He's an all-around good kid, a nice guy. He doesn't have the big head, like a lot of kids would be full of themselves," Bufford said.
Foluke has around 130 more points to score to become Metro's all-time leading scorer, but he has some goals after that as well.
While he has some academic opportunities awaiting him in college, the ability to perform on the court at the next level is another dream.
"I haven't found the right (college) just yet. I'm also trying to go to a HBCU, so if I would get an offer from them then that would be great," Foluke said.
"I think he could potentially be a pro. Maybe not on the NBA level, but if he took it that seriously and he wanted to, his ability to score is special," Bufford said.