Beating the odds.
Former University of Toledo basketball star Craig Thames did that throughout his athletic career, and for 21 years since has tried to help struggling teenagers do the same in his social work as a mental health specialist.
Born March 11, 1973, in Toledo to parents Gloria Thames and Rick Washington, Craig Thames, 47, spent much of his youth growing up in the Detroit suburb of Lincoln Park.
Although he evolved into a great basketball talent at Waite High School (Class of 1991) and later at UT (1992-96), that was his third sport in his grade school and junior high years in Lincoln Park.
At age 11, when he was already able to run a mile in under six minutes, cross country was Thames’ first athletic passion. He qualified for the youth nationals in Omaha and he placed 15th in the country.
Next, Thames’ skill emerged in tennis, a sport he continued into high school when he moved to East Toledo and began at Waite in the fall of 1987. He earned All-City League honors all four years, and he set the Indians’ career record for singles victories with 80.
Eventually it was basketball that rose to the top of Thames’ priority list by junior high. But he first had to escape a nightmarish environment and learn to overcome his lack of size before turning himself into a formidable player in high school and college.
In a predominantly white junior high school setting, Thames remembers frequent racial slurs, taunting, kids running into him with their bikes, and other attempts to bully him.
Not a violent person by nature, Thames found the older he got the more he was forced to defend himself.
Following his eighth-grade year, he had had enough. His mother, by then married to stepfather Larry McClelland, consented to allow Craig to move south to the Birmingham neighborhood in East Toledo, where his grandmother, Willie Thames, became his legal guardian.
When Thames started at Waite in 1987 he was all of 5-foot-5 and 125 pounds, and he ultimately found a stable mentor in Indians head basketball coach Joe Guerrero.
After a season of freshman basketball, Thames had the talent to move up to the Waite varsity, but as Guerrero recalled he was still “just too small” at about 5-7 and 130.
After “springing up” to 5-10 by his junior year, Thames became arguably the best basketball player ever to play at Waite, using springs rarely seen in City League basketball, before or since.
A gifted athletic player with a smooth, accurate shooting touch, Thames separated himself with his 42-inch vertical leaping ability. At Waite, he felt at home, playing together with first cousins Kennie Joe Washington and Victor Washington.
Before his senior season, Thames committed to a scholarship offer from UT head coach Jay Eck, who had seen the emerging Waite star play summer basketball on the same AAU team as then St. John’s Jesuit star Shane Komives.
Waite had had only occasional and limited success in boys basketball — winning its last share of a City League title in 1953, reaching the City championship game in 1974, and getting to a district semifinal in 1981 — before having its best season ever in 1990-91.
The Indians, led by Thames’ 24.2 points per game, opened the season at 11-0, including a win over Komives’ St. John’s team. At that point Waite was ranked No. 4 in the Division I state poll.
The first loss came against a powerhouse St. Francis de Sales team that included six eventual Division I college players. At a packed Waite field house, Thames and his teammates owned a nine-point lead entering the fourth quarter before losing the game in the final minute.
The Indians finished at 19-4 overall with another close loss to St. Francis in the district semifinals, and Thames earned third team All-Ohio honors.
A year after the minimum qualifying ACT score rose from 17 to 18, Thames scored a 17 on the test. He attended UT as a freshman in 1991-92, but he was not permitted to play or even practice with the Rockets.
He joined the Rockets for the 1992-93 season. Later, after other college student-athletes elsewhere had challenged the switch in the minimum ACT standard in court and won, Thames was one of many who had a fourth year of college athletic eligibility restored.
That “extra” year turned out to be a great one for Thames.
In 1995-96, he averaged 21.8 points per game, scoring a UT single-season record 699 points. He also led the Rockets (18-14 overall, 9-9 Mid-American Conference) to the MAC championship game at Toledo’s SeGate Centre, where they lost to Eastern Michigan.
For his career, Thames averaged 17.2 points in 114 games, and remains the No. 2 all-time scorer in UT history (1,964 points), trailing only Ken Epperson (2,016 points, 1981-85).
Midway through his UT career, Thames began taking frequent trips to Detroit in the summer to play against some of the nation’s best college competition, including members of the University of Michigan’s Fab Five — Chris Webber and Jalen Rose — and other Detroiters and future NBA players Derrick Coleman and Howard Eisley.
That competition gave Thames the confidence necessary to elevate his game at UT. He was named second team All-MAC as a sophomore, and first team his final two years.
At just 5-11, Thames averaged 6.5 rebounds per game over his final three years, had 207 career steals (fourth in UT history), averaged 3.2 assists, hit 139 career 3-pointers, and scored a career-high 37 points in a win at Central Michigan his junior season.
He was inducted into the UT athletic hall of fame in 2003, and he is now a member of five halls of fame.
Undrafted and unable to land a spot in the NBA following his time at UT, Thames spent five years playing professional basketball in Austria, Germany, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela before calling it quits.
Craig and former wife Katrina are parents to three children. Daughter Whitney, 20, played basketball at Perrysburg High School and Owens Community College. Son Micah, 15, will be a junior at Central Catholic, where he also plays basketball. Daughter Kallie, 12, also plays basketball.
He currently works at the Genacross Family & Youth Services facility in Liberty Center, helping teen-aged residents through a variety of issues as they transition to adulthood.
THE MOVE: “It was something that I wanted to do,” Thames said of moving to East Toledo in 1987. “I had a lot of my family down here, and we came down here just about every weekend anyway. My cousins and I were all close. Kennie and Victor Washington, we all played together in high school.
“The first thing that I liked about [Waite] was that it was diverse. Where I came from it was predominantly white and, after what I went through there, I felt more comfortable here. We had different cultures and races, and I felt very at home.”
WAITE’S BEST: “What stands out is that we were one of the best D-I teams in the state that year,” Thames said. “Who would’ve ever thought that Waite would be one of the best teams in the area let alone the state? And, who ever thought that a little scrawny kid like myself would be the anchor to lead that team?
“The best memories for me were winning sectionals against Maumee and advancing to the district. Also, beating St. John’s. That was probably the best highlight, because one of my best friends, Shane Komives, played for them. We’re still great friends to this day. We met through basketball and played on the same AAU team. Before my senior year we went to Las Vegas for a big invitational.”
ROCKET MAN: “I played a lot right away and ended up starting as a freshman. I had 31 points in one game against Ohio University and Gary Trent, the Shaq of the MAC. “[UT coach] Larry Gipson was honest, and he just wanted you to be the best player you could be by working hard and being disciplined. It was academics first, and he wanted you to be the ultimate student-athlete.
“We were always in the middle of the pack in the MAC, but we had winning seasons. We were in the MAC championship game my senior year when they had it down at SeaGate [Centre] here for the first time. We lost to Eastern Michigan.
“When you lose that type of game the last time you step on the floor as a college athlete, it’s tough. To this day, I still take it to heart. I was mad that I couldn’t get it done in my home town with all of our fans and all of my family there for support. I wanted to win that game for the whole city of Toledo, and we fell short.”
POST COLLEGE: “I went to two pre-draft camps, and I did pretty well there and got a bunch of looks from overseas teams. I had a lot of NBA teams inquire about me, but it didn’t work out.
“I don’t know that it was my size or not. They never really gave me the specifics. But, looking at my draft year in 1996, that was probably one of the best drafts of all time [for guards]. Ray Allen [No. 5 pick], Allen Iverson [No. 1], Stephon Marbury [No. 4], Shareef Abdur-Rahim [No. 3]. It was pretty stacked.”
Other first-round selections in 1996 at guard were Kobe Bryant [No. 13] and Steve Nash [No. 15].
“As much confidence as I had, I wasn’t too mad about that,” Thames said. “Those guys got all the publicity, and I was this little 5-11 guy from Toledo. Who is he?”
NEW CALLING: Having earned his degree from UT, after stepping away from basketball Thames took a job in social work with the Lutheran Services organization, which serves the northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan areas.
“I just knew from a very young age — and I didn’t know in what capacity — that I always wanted to help kids,” Thames said. “In college, I used to go talk to kids about education, and to tell them ‘don’t do drugs.’ I would tell them to be the best person you can be, and be respectful to adults and parents. I always wanted to do something like that.
“My calling was the field I’m in now. The rewarding part of doing what I do now is making a kid smile, and just making them think that the situation they’re in now doesn’t mean they can’t be successful in life.”
First Published June 13, 2020, 12:15 a.m.
