For Glynn and Hewett, timing was everything

So much about succeeding in sports is having the right timing.

In basketball, a game of constant motion, anticipating and reacting is critical.

In baseball, a hitter needs to match his swing plane to the path of a hurled pitch at precisely the right moment.

Timing was critical off the field, too, for a couple of Portsmouth High School athletes who either made — or are getting close to making — decisions to advance their careers at the highest collegiate levels.

Joey Glynn, who capped an outstanding career at Portsmouth with back-to-back state basketball titles and the Gatorade Player of the Year award as a senior, enrolled for a postgraduate year at Tilton School to up his recruiting profile.

It paid off quickly. Competing against other top players in pickup games at the school before the season even started — and in view of several college coaches — he was offered a full scholarship to play at UMass-Lowell beginning next fall.

“It’s a stop (coaches) want to make,” said Tilton coach Marcus O’Neil. “It’s not unusual to see a kid get an offer before he’s played a game, like Joe has.”

Glynn, listed at 6-foot-6, impressed during the practices and continued to impress once Tilton’s season started, scoring in double-figures consistently as the Rams started 5-1. In an early-season win at New Hampton, he scored 12 points and grabbed eight rebounds, matching up against Stanford-bound 7-footer Keenan Fitzmorris.

It’s a nice ascent for a player who, a year ago, was trying to get on the radar of some Division II teams. He’s the first Portsmouth boys player to earn a Division I scholarship since James Best in 1984.

“You love it when it happens to a kid like that,” said Jim Mulvey, his coach at Portsmouth. “He put in more time than anyone. When other kids were going to the beach, he was in the gym. If there was no one else there, it was: ‘No problem, work me out.’”

O’Neil, a Portsmouth native (Class of 1991) who’s in his 13th year as Tilton’s head coach, where he’s won a national prep championship, New England championships and sent scores of players on to Division I programs, said Glynn has “exceeded expectations.”

“The hardest thing for Division I coaches — and even Division II schools — is if you go and watch a public school team in our state, you’ve got to put those guys in context,” said O’Neil. “If there’s no one else on the floor at the time that projects to play Division I or Division II, it can be really tough to evaluate.”

Around the time Glynn was accepting his scholarship offer, Portsmouth sophomore Calvin Hewett was seeing his baseball future come into sharper focus.

The 6-foot-3 Hewett, a freshman starter in center field on the Clippers’ Division II championship team last spring, spent the fall playing on weekends for Kissimmee, Fla.-based Florida Travel Ball. He’d fly down on Friday afternoons and fly home on Sunday nights, playing in high-level tournaments and showcases in between.

“Not a lot of sleep,” he noted, “but it was fun, for sure.”

The 15-year-old also attended a fall camp at Vanderbilt. It was reported on social media sites last month that Hewett had made a verbal commitment to attend Vanderbilt, but his family said this week that the reports were premature.

Hewett, ironically, is one of the basketball players Mulvey is currently looking at to help fill the void created by Glynn’s graduation, maybe even in a starting role. The defending champion Clippers open their new season Friday at Manchester Central.

“He can help us in a lot of ways,” said Mulvey. “He’s got a lot of smarts, and in three months, I think he’ll be so much better.”

He’ll also be three months closer to baseball season.

“This season definitely gets my speed up,” said Hewett. “After my first year here playing for Coach Mulvey, you could definitely see a difference in my speed.”

Their timing hasn’t been bad, either.

Mike Zhe is a Herald staff writer. He can be reached at mzhe@seacoastonline.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MikeZhe603.