Basketball is not in Sekou Dembele’s blood.
Dembele’s hometown of Bamako, Mali is not a hotbed for basketball talent. The Skyhawks senior grew up playing soccer and loved playing forward and goalkeeper with his friends. He followed and cheered for Real Madrid ever since Cristiano Ronaldo joined the club in 2009.
Both of Dembele’s parents, Assanatou and Amidou, are teachers. Dembele credits his parents with emphasizing the importance of education to keep him and his brother and two sisters away from what was happening in Mali.
The West African country has been in conflict for over a decade, with numerous military coups d’état occurring since 2012. Fighting is still going on in the country to this day.
So how did Dembele go from a soccer player in Mali to Fort Lewis’ starting center, averaging 7.8 points per game and 4.5 rebounds per game?
It started with a growth spurt.
“I started playing basketball when I was 14,” Dembele said. “I started growing up and everybody said, ‘Oh, you’re tall, you should start playing basketball.’ At that time, basketball wasn’t a popular sport back home. Everybody wanted to play soccer, but I gave it a chance and my progression has been really fast.”
Dembele’s progression was so fast that a few years after picking up the game, he played for Mali’s U-18 national team. Dembele was on the squad that finished third in the African U-18 championships, and he played in the 2017 U-19 FIBA World Cup in Egypt.
After playing numerous events on the global stage, Dembele came to America and played for Central Park Christian School in Birmingham, Alabama.
Dembele said his transition to America was interesting.
“First I came here, I didn't speak any English. So that was my first time interacting with people, but I'm grateful for the opportunity they gave me over there,” he said. “My coach would always take time to understand what I was saying, even though we didn't really understand each other. They put a lot of resources in my hands so I could learn first English. On the court, it was pretty much self-explanatory. Just play hard. Basketball is pretty much a common language on the court.”
Dembele missed the food back in Mali and struggled to express himself, so he learned to figure some things out on his own while in Birmingham. He was at Central Park Christian School for less than a year before he graduated and turned his focus to college.
Numerous NCAA Division I schools sought Dembele’s services after he played some high-level AAU ball in Saint Louis. He chose Southern Illinois University after he connected with the players and coaches at a summer camp.
“It was a great experience for me, honestly,” Dembele said of his time at Southern Illinois. “I tried to spend four years there. My freshman year was mostly a lot of teaching for me a lot of learning, I redshirted. After that year we had to transition to a new coach. Both of the coaches that I had, the coaching staff, I had a great relationship and I still do. I feel like they taught me a lot, you know, basketball-wise, on and off the court.”
However, Dembele broke his tibia while at Southern Illinois. He graduated from Southern Illinois after he focused on his academics with his coach’s blessing. After his leg healed, Dembele wanted to give basketball another chance elsewhere.
Dembele committed to Fort Lewis after seeing the player-coach relationship the Skyhawks had, as well as the energy during pickup runs he was a part of. The beauty of Colorado didn’t hurt either.
“Sekou is a joy to be around,” Skyhawks coach Bob Pietrack said. “He's very consistent in his mood, a very happy person in general. He's brought a lot of toughness to our program, a great interior defender, excellent rebounder, and he's just getting better and better offensively.”
Despite playing in a reserve role last season, averaging 13.3 minutes, four points and 4.7 rebounds per game, Pietrack said Fort Lewis wouldn’t have won the RMAC tournament title without Dembele’s defense on Black Hills State’s Joel Scott and Colorado School of Mines’ numerous bigs.
The 6-foot-7, 250-pound 25-year-old describes his game as physical, focusing on great defense and playing hard. Dembele knows scoring hasn’t been a problem while he has been at Fort Lewis, and he tries to play the role the team needs him to play.
“He's developing an offensive skill set that is underrated because when people think of him, you think of him as an enforcer, defender, rebounder, a physical presence in the paint,” Pietrack said. “He's more than that, he really is.”
Dembele was impressed with the maturity of the 2022-23 Fort Lewis squad and how everyone was on the same page last season, with winning being the top priority.
This year, Dembele has been impressed with the team’s depth. Even so, he said this year’s squad still needs some time to figure out what everyone’s roles are to ensure the team succeeds.
“He leads by example a majority of the time,” Pietrack said. “He shows up every day, a lunch pail-type guy as far as comes to work ready to work, never complains. He's tough and a lot along with Junior (Garbrah), those two senior leaders as far as continuity in the program and how we do things, have been instrumental in us getting off to a pretty good start so far. Sekou’s quiet in nature, but when he does say something, everybody listens.”
While Dembele doesn’t come from a basketball family, he’s now a part of numerous basketball families that have taken him all over the globe. The baller from Bamako now eyes another NCAA tournament run, all while guiding the Skyhawks with the wisdom of his world travels.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
