Basketball
Favorite athlete: Paul George
Favorite team: Philadelphia 76ers
Favorite memory competing in sports: Game-winning free throws against Bensalem during my junior year
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Getting my ankles broken in AAU basketball
Music on your playlist: NBA YoungBoy
Future plans: Student athlete in college
Words to live by: “Heart over height.”
One goal before turning 30: Playing professional basketball
One thing people don’t know about me: When I was younger, I was a better football player than a basketball player.
By Craig Ostroff
Emeer Coombs had himself quite a week.
To open the week the Neshaminy senior point guard provided an extraordinary effort at the end of a remarkable come-from-behind non-league victory over Conestoga. Trailing by 5 with just 15 seconds left in regulation, Coombs sank a deep 3-pointer from just in front of the Neshaminy bench to cut the deficit to 2 points. Nate Townsend came up with a steal on the inbounds when Conestoga threw it deep and immediately got it to Coombs, who was fouled for a side-out with 0.6 seconds left on the clock. The inbounds pass went to Coombs, and the two-year captain calmly (but quickly) sank a deep 3-pointer at the buzzer to give the Redskins a stunning 49-48 victory.
Four days later, Coombs finished his week standing at the foul line with 1.6 ticks left and Neshaminy trailing Council Rock North by a single point. With ice in his veins, Coombs hit both shots from the charity stripe to lift Neshaminy to a 60-59 win.
The positive energy he gets from his teammates, and those moments in the locker room after a huge win - that’s what Coombs loves the most about basketball.
“When the game is close and there’s a lot of pressure on the line, I just try to block out the noise,” Coombs said. "I've put work into my game, and I’ve had a lot of people help me develop my game to get to where I am. I definitely want to be that guy with the ball in my hands. I’m confident when I’ve got the ball in my hands. Even if you don’t succeed every time, you can still learn from those situations.
“But when you can pull out a close game, it's the best feeling, I can’t even describe it. The love I get from my parents, my brothers, my teammates. Everyone believing, ‘Yeah, he’s gonna knock down those free throws,’ that whole experience is just amazing. And the locker rooms after those games - of course, if you win by 10 or 15 points, those are great, but those games you win by 1, the locker room is just amazing after that, it’s so much fun to be a part of that.”
Coming up big time and again is nothing new for Coombs. It’s almost become the norm.
“The two kids we look at all the time, Emeer and Nate, they’ve both stepped up, do what we need them to do at the end of the game, and they always come up clutch for us,” said Neshaminy coach Mark Tingle. “Emeer has shown it not just this year, but last year as well. We had a first-round playoff game last year where he scored 23, we had a game last year where he hit big free throws in overtime to win the game with no time on the clock. He’s had those moments throughout career, he always comes up big for us.”
But Coombs—a three-year starter who is averaging 13 points, 3 assists, and 2 steals per game this season and is shooting better than 40 percent from the three-point line for his high school career—doesn’t just step up when the game is on the line. He’s giving nothing less than 100 percent from the opening jump, and often in ways that don’t appear on the scoresheets.
Because as prolific and talented a shooter as Coombs is, he takes just as much pride in his defensive game as he does in his offense.
“My favorite player is Paul George, and he’s one of the best two-way players in the NBA,” Coombs said of the Los Angeles Clippers point guard, a nine-time NBA All-Star and four-time NBA All-Defensive Team selection. “Growing up watching him be a two-way player and be an all-star, that shows you it’s the correct way to play basketball. You have to play defense. You can score as much as you want, but you have to make sure you’re not letting the other team score more than you. You want to make your defense as good as it can be.”
As one of four senior captains, that’s something that Coombs preaches to the younger players—not everyone can be the leading scorer, and not everyone makes the game-winning shot, but everyone has a part to play and everyone can contribute to the success of the team.
And the team has taken that message to heart. After stumbling out of the gate to a 1-3 start, the Redskins improved to 6-6 before winning 9 of their last 10 games, including their last six to end the regular season.
Coombs said the senior leaders took the blame for the slow start, but they also took it upon themselves to right the ship.
“We had some inexperience early on, but we had three experienced starters coming back,” he said. “We had to develop our chemistry and there was not a lot of ball movement early in the season.
“The four captains got together—me, Ryan (Meehan), Nate, and Guy (Horton)—and we talked about how this is our last year so we’ve got to make it count. We had this big conversation, got the coaches in as well. But we thought that we were slacking portraying that role as captains and leaders.
“We needed to pick it up and lead the younger guys, build confidence, and help team out. We worked on it in practice, developed better ball movement, built up our chemistry, and the younger guys followed our lead. We started working better at practice, and the younger guys believed in what we told them, bought into their individual roles, and that’s what led to us winning 9 of our last 10 games.”
Being there for the younger players is important to Coombs. He remembers starting as a sophomore, and said his relationships with the then-captains— Kade Benjamin, Nunzio Zydzik, and especially Evan Esposito—helped him with his confidence and made him feel like he belonged.
Of course, those who watched him as a sophomore never had a doubt that Coombs deserved his spot.
“We knew from early on that Emeer had the basketball IQ to play at the varsity level early,” Tingle said. “It was an easy choice to bring him up as a sophomore and let him play.
“Even as a sophomore, he had that court IQ, but he also had no fear, which is something I look for when you’re going to move up to the varsity level. He had no fear playing against older guys, was never fearful of the big moments. And even from the beginning, he loved to play defense. Not every kid wants to play defense, and he’s always been very good at it. And he plays the game calmly, with very few real highs and lows. He’s very consistent.”
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Anyone who sees the effort Coombs gives during games, and sees how hard he works in practice, knows that that effort doesn’t end when he leaves the court. Coombs is also a stellar student, boasting a weighted GPA above 4.0, and has a senior courseload filled with AP and Honors-level classes.
The importance of academics was instilled in Coombs from an early age, but much like on the hardwood, he’s worked hard to better himself and get to where he is now.
“It’s always important to find that balance between academics and sports,” said Coombs, who is a member of the school’s National Honor Society. “At a young age, my parents explained to me how academics is important, and that got me to believe it as well. But me being a hardworking person, anything I do I always give my best effort, so my parents don’t have to push me as much as some parents may have to stay on their kids. I push myself.”
Coombs is still undecided on his next step. He plans on playing basketball in college and is looking at several schools in the Northeast. Wherever he chooses, he expects to enter with an undecided major, though he said he’s considering something along the lines of kinesiology.
“Wherever Emeer may go, he’s going to be successful,” Tingle said. “Wherever he ends up, they’re going to gain a great person, a really good, humble kid, and when he gets on court, he’s a guy who’s going to give you 100 percent all the time, at both ends of the court, and who never wants to come out of the game.”
But choosing a college and selecting a major are concerns for a later day. Right now, Coombs is a big part of a Neshaminy team that is having a lot of fun and is playing its best basketball of the season as it heads into the Suburban One League Championship tournament, PIAA District One tournament, and possibly the PIAA State Championship tournament.
He—and his teammates—want to make that fun last for as long as possible. And if Coombs gets the call with the game on the line -he’s ready to do his part.
“We know the competition is going to be great, but with the guys on our team, if we play our brand of basketball, we know can compete with anyone,” Coombs said.
