At just 14 years of age, Jérémy Gohier already stands at 2.2 metres (7′3″) and hasn’t finished growing.
“Whenever I walk somewhere, everybody looks at me,” he said.
That kind of attention can be hard to take for any teenager, but as a basketball player with NBA ambitions, Gohier says his height is definitely an asset.
“Sometimes, well, I’d like to be 1.5 [metres] (5′), like to disappear, but I prefer to be 2.1 [metres] (7′) and play my sport,” he said.
When Gohier started playing basketball at the age of six, he was already well over 1.5 metres (5′) tall.
By the time he reached 10, he was a towering 1.9 metres (6′5″).
Coach Daniel Mulumba remembers seeing him play at a U14 tryout and assumed he was one of the older kids.
“I was actually surprised,” he said. “If he’s 1.9 metres (6′5”) at 10 years old already, then there’s definitely something we can do."
There’s an old basketball saying that you can’t train height, and Mulumba says Gohier is a natural talent.
The two have worked one-on-one over the last four years.
“His greatest asset, besides him being tall, is his work ethic, and he’s really competitive,” Mulumba said.
Gohier is currently in the Sports-études program at École Georges-Vanier in Laval, north of Montreal, but Mulumba says he’s likely to make a move in the next few years to compete in Europe or the United States.
His parents, Félix Gohier and Geneviève Brosseau, have accompanied him in every step of his basketball career to this point, travelling across the continent for tournaments.
Gohier says they were initially concerned about their son’s growth spurts and took him to doctors for tests.
“Everything always came back negative,” he said. “So, we assumed that it was just his genetics.”
Although there is some height in the family, he says Jérémy is an exception.
At 242 pounds with size 20 feet, the teen is not done growing, and his father says he needs at least four meals a day to keep fuelled.
While he may have a shot of one day making it to the NBA, Gohier says they don’t want their son to feel pressured to play.
“Honestly, whether he gets there or not, I just want him to like what he’s doing,” he said.
