Mesa star to play more this year

Richard Obert
The Arizona Republic
Nov. 18, 2007 05:58 PM

While his Mesa High teammates played on Friday nights, Donte' Medder, the guy who makes the basketball team go, stayed home, deep in prayer.

"I felt I like I let people down," Medder said.

Medder, a 6-foot-1 junior point guard, was raised in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, where Saturday is considered the Sabbath, a day of rest, and from Friday sunset to Saturday sundown is a time observed with family, in church, without outside activities.

It was more important to Medder not to let down God.

"We follow the Bible more strict," he said. "That's always been a priority. It feels like I've gained a lot (through our beliefs). It helps, and it hurts."

Medder missed 11 games last season when the Friday night games started to come after Mesa began the season 9-3, capturing the Horizon tournament championship before Christmas.

There were two close losses to Mesa Red Mountain after the new year - both on Friday nights without Medder - and Mesa finished 16-13, losing to Chandler Hamilton in the first round of the Class 5A Division I tournament.

"It's my duty as a dad and my wife's duty as his mom to raise him under what we believe and know that's right," said Bike Medder, the longtime women's basketball coach at Scottsdale Community College. "We told him and his coach, under our roof he'll go by house rules. You can't be wishy-washy about those things. You have to have guidelines about those things. We felt strongly about that. We won't play Saturday day and Friday nights."

Now, there might be only one Friday night that Mesa will have a game this season, and Medder won't play.

Mesa coach Shane Burcar was able to work it out with opposing schools to change their dates to accommodate Medder and his faith.

That's good news for Mesa and bad for the rest of the state.

Mesa, with an even more mature and developed Medder, who averaged 7.1 points and 2.6 assists as a sophomore, and a huge inside presence in 6-7 senior Aaron Fuller, who averaged 18 points and 10 rebounds last season, is The Arizona Republic's preseason No. 1 team in 5A-I.

"I'm not going to fight with religion," Burcar said. "That's his faith, and nobody should judge. I'm just glad everyone was good about changing, but Westwood."

Incidentally, Burcar coached at Westwood before taking over at Mesa last year.

"Everyone at Mesa has really helped with this," Bike Medder said. "We appreciate that."

Fuller can't wait to have Medder on a regular basis.

"It's going to help to have him for most of the games," Fuller said. "It will help me a lot. They have to come out and guard against his jump shot."

Burcar calls Medder an old-school point guard who improved on his shooting and his strength over the summer.

With 6-5 Beau Gardner adding inside strength and 6-2 Keelan Johnson providing quickness, Mesa appears equipped to make a long run.