Nate Montgomery rises through Sheffield Sharks junior teams to earn BBL contract

Ever since he was a toddler, Montgomery – from Chapeltown in north Sheffield – has been watching the Sharks from the stands.

At age eight, then Sharks player Atiba Lyons was the special guest at his basketball-themed birthday party.

Twelve months later, the young Montgomery attended a trial for Sharks’ Under-13s team and earned selection. All through his teenage years he played for the Sharks age groups, breaking into the first team 18 months ago.

Today, aged 20, he signed his first professional contract with the only club he has ever known.

“I could have gone to America to try and get a scholarship like a lot of guys I knew from the Yorkshire representative teams did,” Montgomery told The Yorkshire Post.

“But I’m only 5ft 9in, I didn’t know if I’d fit the mould. So I made the decision pretty early that I had a clearer pathway to making it as a professional player by staying with the Sharks.

“My mother and father were a good support network, as was Atiba (now the coach).

“I’d 100 per cent advocate any youngster going through the system of a British club.”

Montgomery is not a token local either. As he showed in brief glimpses for the BBL team in the curtailed 2019-20 campaign, he can shoot, using his limited minutes to post the highest shooting percentage (71.4) of the entire team.

“This will be a big year for me,” he said of his first contract.

“I felt as though I took my opportunities last year but I know there’s a lot of areas I need to improve on. The aim is to establish myself in the BBL and become a player who can play a lot of important minutes.

“Position-wise, I’m trying to develop my game as a point guard.

“I’ve got caught up before in obsessing too much about the future. The only long-term plan I’ll commit to is saying that if it was up to me I’d play in Sheffield all my career. So long as I can make a good living out of playing for Sheffield, that’s the aim.”

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James Mitchinson