Duncan Schramm has a pretty good vertical leap.
As a 6-foot-4, 175-pound shooting guard for the Desert Vista boys basketball team last season, he pulled down 116 rebounds and had a team high 4.5 per game average.
But he wants to go higher.
“I’d like to be a pilot,” the Desert Vista senior said.
He’s going to the right place for that goal.
Schramm has accepted a scholarship to play basketball at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.
He was recruited by schools like Columbia, Colorado State-Pueblo and Puget Sound, but one trip to Colorado Springs sealed it.
“One you’ve seen the campus and facilities there, it wasn’t a hard decision, really,” he said.
Schramm is a former baseball player who switched to basketball and averaged two points per game and had 42 total rebounds in his junior season with the Thunder.
But he found his game playing with the Arizona Magic club team in five competitive tournaments last summer.
The Air Force found itself a late recruiting “sleeper” when Schramm played in the Double Pump West Coast All-Star game at the University of California-Dominguez Hills last July.
“I guess I’m a late bloomer,” Schramm explained with a grin.
He did bloom last season where he was the only shooting guard among the 5A-I top 10 in three-point shots (63), rebounds and blocks.
Schramm will also graduate from Desert Vista next week with a 3.93 GPA in the honors class curriculum.
He will be continuing a bit of a family tradition as well. His grandfather, Jim Smiley, is an Air Force Korean War era veteran.
Schramm has been a deadly perimeter shot maker, and the Falcons run what is called a Princeton offense, which involves motion, passing and sets up the outside shooting game.
He said he expects Air Force to keep him in a guard spot.
Schramm will report to the academy’s prep school in July.
