East’s Malik Marrow quietly pours in points for hometown school

February 2, 2016 at 12:08a.m.

By Brian Dzenis

YOUNGSTOWN

Malik Marrow is the one that didn’t get away.

At East High School where he plays basketball, it’s rare to see a player of his abilities stick with his hometown school district. Often, athletes from Youngstown who show signs of having real varsity talent are either scooped up by parochial schools with no geographic boundaries to pull students or a public school open-enrollment slot. It’s a reality East coach Dennis Simmons is all too familiar with.

“You’ll have kids in sixth, seventh or eighth grade that you never see because they move or you start working with a kid in ninth grade and they move to another school,” Simmons said. “They’ll go to a parochial school or they move out of the city — that’s just the nature of the beast.

“The consistency of sixth grade through twelfth grade is not very common,” Simmons said.

Marrow is just one of only four players in the Mahoning Valley averaging more than 20 points-per-game (21.3). The others are Lakeview’s Chris Muir, Warren Harding’s Gabe Simpson and Ursuline’s Greg Parella.

Marrow is putting up big numbers against plenty of Division I competition. While he was surprised to learn of how high he ranks, he knows why he’s toiling in relative anonymity.

Last year, East (4-11) had a two-win season.

“If I’m one of the top scorers around the area, I think I should be more known than I am right now,” Marrow said. “But we still have to get some wins and that’s why I haven’t been out there.”

He’s been having some of his best games since the calendar flipped against some of the area’s more respected programs. Marrow dropped 29 points against Jefferson, 22 against Warren Harding and 30 against Poland. The Panthers lost nine in a row to start the season before winning four of their last six games.

“I never let my faith go,” Marrow said. “I always trusted my team and knew that one day it was going to click, one of these games it would come together.”

Simmons said that while Marrow has what it takes to play college basketball, it has been hard to garner interest from more than just a handful of area programs.

“He played as a starter last year, but because of our record, there’s no buzz coming into the season,” Simmons said. “But now that we’ve put some wins together, it should be easier.”

Marrow, a late-bloomer at East, says he’ll attend college regardless if it involves basketball. He didn’t play varsity ball his freshman season and didn’t see the floor at all in his sophomore year.

“Sophomore year, I messed up. It was a maturity problem,” Marrow said. “I was a clown in school. I messed around and then I was ineligible.

“I stayed here and put the work in,” Marrow said. “Then in the summer I did a little bit of the work, but not everything that I was supposed to and that’s when I was still learning.”

He got his first taste of varsity action as a junior, but it was until the summer of his senior year when he finally bought into Simmons program and his numbers have taken off.

Marrow is the nephew of Valley Christian’s football coach Brian Marrow and of Kentucky tight ends coach Vince Marrow.

“Every time I say my last name and where I come from, I hear about how my genes are and how athletic my background is,” Marrow said. “I take it as a gift.”

A rare home-grown star at East, Marrow serves an example to Simmons’ players of what they can be if they stick with the program, be it on the court or in the classroom.

“It’s a big thing in a city school. When you don’t have a kid for more than two years, he doesn’t know what to expect,” Simmons said. “Now these guys know what is expected of them.”