By Mason Kelley
GoHuskies.com
When Noah Dickerson was in seventh grade, he switched schools. He enrolled in a private school Atlanta, Ga. The last student to gain acceptance that year, he had little choice in his class schedule.
On the day he received the list of courses he would take, one stood out. He was signed up for a dance class.
“I don’t want this,” he thought at the time.
It was the only class available. Like it or not, he was taking the course.
“As it turns out, a lot of kids I knew were in there,” he said. “I actually started to enjoy it, so I just kept taking it.”
Now a freshman forward at Washington, that dance class aided his development on the basketball floor.
“It was tremendous,” Dickerson said.
He studied tap, ballet and hip-hop, among others. At the time, Dickerson’s focus was football. His work in dance class helped his footwork. That training translated to seamlessly to the basketball floor.
“I had really quick feet,” he said.
A few years later, Dickerson gave up football to concentrate on the game that made him a top 100 prospect coming out of high school. His dance training helped make him a dervish on the court.
“I haven’t really done it this year, but I love to spin baseline,” he said. “Back when I was taking dance classes, I was really quick.”
Looking back on his experience in dance, he said ballet was his favorite style.
“That (ballet) was by far the weirdest to watch me do, but it was fun,” he said. “I enjoyed it.”
It was also the most beneficial, because, “I was used to spinning all the time.”
Now that he is in college, he wants to one day get back into to dance.
“It helps a lot,” Dickerson said. “It really does. I really want to take it again, because it will get my feet faster.”
When asked to describe Dickerson’s game last week, Washington coach Lorenzo Romar called the freshman’s footwork, “phenomenal.”
“He’s done a couple of things on the court where, you can go to all the big man camps you want, this is just something that he’s got,” Romar said.
Then the coach took it one step further. Standing in a hallway in Hec Edmundson Pavilion, he demonstrated something he witnessed when the Huskies played Texas. The move was so impressive he had to both show and tell.
He starts to describe a play designed to get Dickerson in position for a drop-step finish. However, in this particular instance, the forward felt a defender make an adjustment that would take away the move, so he turned the other way, split two defenders and finished at the rim.
“He splits them with one step,” Romar said. “One step. Who does that? That’s footwork at its finest.”
The coach added that the only other player he has coached with footwork that impressive is Brandon Roy, putting Dickerson in impressive company.
It all started with a serendipitous scheduling issue. He never planned on taking dance. But the “only class that was available” proved to be a direct benefit to his game.
Like Romar said, watching Dickerson is an example of footwork at its finest.
