FORTVILLE — A kid from New Palestine and a kid from Mt. Vernon were used to facing off against one another.
One played for the New Palestine Diamond Cutters youth baseball team. The other, the Mt. Vernon squad. One was a quarterback in New Palestine’s youth football program. The other, a QB for Mt. Vernon’s.
They were opponents, but they were teammates in basketball. They were friends.
More importantly, they are family.
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The New Palestine kid — now a Mt. Vernon senior, Tyson Harley — and the Mt. Vernon kid — Mt. Vernon senior Cade Gentry — have been close their entire lives. They’ve competed against one another, they’ve teamed with one another, they’ve hung out with one another, and now, they will head to college with one another.
The two cousins have both signed with Anderson University to attend school and play sports, and they will be doing something they are already pretty much used to.
They’ll be rooming together.
“Our entire lives we’ve been like the closest cousins could be, probably,” Gentry said. “Spend the night at each other’s houses, every family event, playing on the same sports teams.”
They became even closer two years ago, when Harley made the move in schools from New Palestine High School to Mt. Vernon High School.
He’s still living in New Palestine and making the daily commute, so he spends a lot of time at Gentry’s house.
“It’s already like we’re rooming together right now,” Harley said. “With the move, his family has made it so easy. Whenever I don’t want to drive home because I have a lot of homework, I stay the night on a school night. I stay over there almost every weekend, at least one day. It’s like we stay together already, so it won’t even be that big of a transition, really.”
Family focus
Growing up, Harley and Gentry’s parents intentionally kept the two connected.
“Our parents did a good job of keeping us close,” Gentry said. “They had a goal. Our grandparents split when they were young, so they went through a divorce and they realized they weren’t close with any of their cousins. They missed that relationship, so they really wanted us to have that.”
They did. Despite going to different schools and playing for mostly different teams, the cousins hung out and saw each other regularly.
They teamed together in the Mt. Vernon youth basketball league, where their grandfather was the coach.
The family connections ran deep. Two cousins playing, a grandfather coaching and a father — Gentry’s — as an assistant coach for the team.
“His dad was our assistant coach, so it was just the whole family,” Harley said. “We were playing, it might have been at Noblesville, and we were both on the court together. I had just gotten fouled, and it was right in front of the other team’s bench. Their coach said something to me, came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder. (Cade’s) dad, as soon as he touched me, got up off the bench, ran over there and said, ‘You don’t touch my nephew!’ That was one of my funniest moments I remember, just both of us together.”
Harley eventually gave up basketball in middle school, ending the cousins’ days of playing on a team together.
They stopped competing directly against each other not long after. Gentry quit football in sixth grade. Harley quit baseball in seventh grade. Gentry quit baseball his freshman year.
But they stayed close. They still were around one another constantly. And once Harley was able to drive, everything kind of changed for the better.
Making the move
During their respective sophomore years, Harley as a Dragon and Gentry as a Marauder, one of the cousins noticed something was off with the other.
“I could tell … he wasn’t struggling, but he wasn’t himself,” Gentry said of Harley. “His freshman year was OK. Sophomore year was … you’re not the same person. Something is going on. You’ve changed a little bit. When he made that decision (to move), I had a smile and thought, ‘Finally.’ We’d been talking about it for years, and when he did, that was awesome.”
There wasn’t anything particularly bad about going to New Palestine, Harley said. He’d just been wanting to switch schools for a few years.
It took a while, though. With Harley’s parents working “crazy” schedules, they couldn’t really drive him to and from Fortville. They wanted to wait until he could drive.
“Obviously, no Mt. Vernon bus is picking me up in New Pal,” Harley said with a laugh.
Hearing that his cousin finally made the change, made the decision to switch schools, was something Gentry said he was very proud of Harley for. He was excited to have his cousin at the same school.
For Harley, the transition was fairly smooth, all things considered.
“The thing I’m going to remember most is how easy it was to move my junior year and everybody just took me in,” Harley said. “I thought it was going to be rough moving schools, like middle of high school, but … “
“Especially to your rivals, a New Pal kid coming in,” Gentry said.
“Especially to my rival school,” Harley continued. “I got all the jokes, of course, during football season.”
He walked in on day one and was the third-string quarterback for the Mt. Vernon football team. Nobody really knew who he was.
He wasn’t as big then, either — “He was smaller than me,” Gentry said — so he drew some looks and some laughs. Once he got on the field, once he got a chance to play, things quickly changed.
Third string became first. Harley started at quarterback for his junior and senior years at Mt. Vernon. Gentry got to watch his cousin succeed, attending every Friday night football game.
“One of the first couple games, he had a really good game where the picks were on the low side,” Gentry said. “He threw a ton during the year."
"Oh, junior year was rough, man," Harley interjected.
"But him establishing himself as the quarterback that I knew he was, and other people just didn’t believe it, I think that was a really proud moment for sure,” Gentry said.
At the same time, Harley got to watch Gentry on the basketball court, including an emotional championship win their junior years and a proud moment this year.
“Sectional championship, we all stormed the court,” Harley said. “I came up and gave Cade a big hug. That was definitely one of the most proud moments. And then this year, I think it was one of the last regular-season games, dude dropped like 23 or 24 points. He wasn’t having the best scoring year, but obviously his defense was crazy this year. But we talked about it a couple of days before. I said, ‘You need to take over. It’s your senior year, you guys have lost a couple in a row. Take over, score some points.’ The next night he dropped 23, 24, and that was awesome just to be there and watch that.”
Next level
When it came time to choose a college, both cousins took interest in Anderson.
Gentry was the first to visit, and was immediately interested in going there. Harley was still looking at schools.
Things took a turn for Harley when Anderson basketball coach Owen Handy was visiting Mt. Vernon. Handy came to a Marauders game and was talking to Gentry and his family. He was introduced to Harley.
Once the coach found out Harley was a quarterback on the Mt. Vernon football team, Handy helped set the wheels in motion.
“That was actually a crazy story,” Harley said. “I was in contact with the offensive coordinator already. I emailed him my HUDL and all that, and he never replied. It was like a week later when I met the basketball coach, and that next night the offensive coordinator texted me.”
Gentry committed to Anderson first. Harley followed not long after.
Harley didn’t choose Anderson just because his cousin was going there, but it certainly had an impact.
“It was a factor. I liked Anderson a lot on my visit," Harley said. "I wouldn’t say that I decided based on Cade going there, but it’s definitely a plus.”
The decision to room together seemed like an obvious one. The basketball staff told Gentry they’d like him to room with a non-basketball player, so the fit was perfect.
Harley is hoping to get into the mix at the quarterback position his freshman year. He knows the school hasn’t had much football success lately, so he will enter college with the goal of trying to play and contribute, getting the team to a .500 record and building from there, hopefully to an eventual playoff opportunity.
Gentry hopes to play some his freshman year. He doesn’t expect to start, but he plans to work hard in practice to earn himself plenty of minutes.
Both are ready and willing to work, and they are going to lean on each other for that. Harley excels in time management, a weakness of Gentry’s. Gentry excels academically, and Harley needs help with that.
“Whenever he sets his mind to anything, he gets it done,” Harley said. “Not even just basketball — I’m talking academics, everything.”
“What’s your GPA, like a 4.4? Something crazy,” Harley asked Gentry.
“Ha. 4.1,” Gentry replied.
“I’m rocking with a 3.3,” Harley said. “I’ll come over to his house some nights after school and he’ll help me with homework. We had a class together last semester …”
“I carried him through the class,’ Gentry said.
“He helped me through that, so really, whenever he sets his mind to something, he does it, especially helping me out," Harley added. "That’s going to be a big plus for college, too, having his smarts there.”
The two said that they expect sports to keep them grounded. There will be plenty of video games, as they plan to keep a whiteboard in their dorm room to track who wins each game of the NBA 2K video game series that they play. They’ll stay in competition that way.
They will be taking different paths in school. Gentry is planning a biology major with a psychology minor as he aims to be a physician’s assistant, while Harley is going to start with a general business major and explore more specific options during his freshman year. They will be on different teams, but they will have each other for the ups and downs as they take the next step and begin their college years.
They are ready to work, they are ready to have fun, and they are ready to get to keep hanging out with each other as they move into the next chapter.
“This dude is a jokester. Everything he can do to mess with me he does,” Gentry said of Harley. “That’s the thing that I feel like if I have a different roommate, I’ll never get that. We won’t have that connection, we won’t have that ability to just laugh at any moment, over anything. I think having that in college is something that is going to be really fun.”