Judging by Richard Fecteau's athletic career at Triton, the easy assumption would be to say the kid is a natural.
In four years, the senior captain of the basketball team has accumulated 10 varsity letters out of a possible 12 in golf, basketball and baseball. He's been a part of an undefeated regular season for the golf team and named an All-Cape Ann League player at shortstop on possibly the toughest infield in the league.
Awaiting at the next level is the starting shortstop position at either Salem State or Southern Maine.
But in reality, Fecteau is a guy who turns out the lights when he's leaving the gym because he's the last one there.
He personifies hard work. It's how he evolved into the Viking basketball team's go-to offensive weapon, averaging 15.2 points and 2.5 assists per game, and similarly became its best shutdown defender, averaging 6.0 rebounds and 2.0 steals per game, all from the shooting guard position.
"This year Richard has accepted and taken on the role as the team's top defender and scorer," said first-year Triton coach Dave Clay, who has worked with Fecteau since he was a sophomore on the JV team. "Richard is the ideal player, a great captain, he never takes a play off and leads by example both in practice and in games. And when he needs to speak up, he'll speak up.
"He's one of those guys that's the first one into the gym and the last one out," said Clay, who said Fecteau routinely will take game footage home to see what he can improve upon individually and see what the team needs to work on. Most of the time, according to Clay, the two are on the same page. "He usually stays after practice and shoots 200 or more 3-pointers. He's always working on his form. He's our go-to player, so he's stepped up every game this year."
Fecteau prepared in the offseason for what was to lie ahead, not only working on that shot, but getting ready to handle the mental pressure of having to go up against every team's top defensive player.
"This year coach told me I was to going to be the go-to guy, so I tried to go out during the summer to shoot and work hard to get my game better and also get that mindset that every team's best defender was going to cover me," said Fecteau.
Growing up playing and losing most backyard games against his brother Andrew, three years his elder, that hatred of defeat would gnaw at it him and motivate him to put in more work. "You have to get that mentality when you have that responsibility."
Like Ray Allen, whose pre-game and post-game shoot-arounds are legendary, Fecteau has continued to use his father after practices to feed him balls for shots, not moving to another spot until he's buried three in a row. That's after he spent most of the summer fielding ground balls on Triton's notoriously bad infield, and spending a bunch of time in the cage. It's paid off. The senior captain has had some big nights, including a 29-point output against Greater Lowell.
But even more importantly for a team and a program that hasn't seen the state tournament in over 10 years, his go-the-extra-mile approach has rubbed off on his teammates. And although the team has continued to struggle at 4-10 this year, Fecteau believes if the younger kids in the program get that mindset to put in the extra work, Triton basketball will turn the corner.
"I sure hope so, because if you've got most of the kids doing that, it will pay off, and this team will get better in a few years," said Fecteau of whether not he felt his work ethic was funneling down to the younger players in the Triton program. "This year when I started staying after, a few more kids started.
"You've got to have a positive attitude and set a good example because we're still here, we've got a bunch of games left," said Fecteau. "We've got a bunch of games left and we'll see if we can win out, maybe get the best record we possibly can working as a team."
And just one more example of Fecteau's determination has been the culmination of his academic career as consistent honor roll student, carrying a 3.1 GPA despite starting as a special needs student in the high school. It's another area in which his coach says Fecteau leads the team.
"My grades are very important to me, because I'm not the best big test-taker like the SATs and stuff like that, but my grades are what helps me out with colleges," said Fecteau. "Both Salem State and Southern Maine liked my transcript, honor roll almost every quarter and I take a lot of pride in that, because I know that's what's going to get me into college. I worked as hard as I humanly could to do well in the classroom."
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