Announcement
For Buckeye's Justin Canedy, The Team Comes First
10/31/2017 - By RICK NOLAND Gazette Assistant Sports Editor
Buckeye's Justin Canedy is one of those kids who is almost too good to be true.
Only 6-foot-1 and 176 pounds, the 18-year-old has high-jumped 6-6, run the 100 meters in 10.88 seconds, dunked about a dozen times in varsity basketball games and scored 21 touchdowns in his football career despite being used primarily as a decoy as a senior.
He carries a 4.53 grade-point average, is ranked eighth academically in Buckeye’s senior class, got a 1,370 on the SAT and plans to study computer science at a college like Columbia, Johns Hopkins or Oberlin.
For good measure, he’s virtually egoless, soft spoken and almost universally liked by students, teachers and coaches at Buckeye, which will host Tallmadge in a Division III, Region 9 playoff game Friday at 7:30 p.m.
“It’s always good to make good grades,” Canedy said Monday following a team film session. “It’s always been important to my family. It leads to success in the future.”
Canedy’s family includes his dad Bruce, a former high school offensive lineman who works as an information technology manager, and mom Diona, an auditor.
Older brother Jordan, 23, earned a computer science degree from Harvard and now works for Google in New York City, while younger brother Jacob, 14, is next to go through Buckeye.
“It’s a family thing,” Canedy said of his planned college major. “My older brother being big into computer science, by dad always being big into computer programming, he passed it down to us.”
As for his athletic ability, Canedy has no idea where it comes from, but he certainly has a ton of it.
With pogo sticks for legs, he can do a 360-degree slam “most of the time” and would be a prohibitive favorite to win a Medina County high school dunk competition.
He runs the 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds, finished sixth in the D-II state high jump competition last spring and qualified for the state meet in the 100.
By the time he graduates, he will have earned 11 varsity letters — four each in football and track and three in basketball, his favorite sport.
It is how Canedy has done all that, though, that is so special. He doesn’t showboat — “I feel bad if I gloat,” he said — or seek individual attention, he’s a total team player and he is probably the person least impressed with all his athletic and academic accomplishments.
“He’s so coachable,” first-year Buckeye football coach Greg Dennison said. “He always does what you ask him to do. He’s the ideal person that you want to have on the team.
“He’s obviously a big reason why we’re 10-0. He’s just so explosive that any time we call a play for him, it’s got a chance to go the distance. He’s fast, but along with that he’s got some power, too. He’s deceiving. He can do a lot of things with the ball.”
Therein lies the rub — and yet another reason why Canedy receives so much respect from his teammates: He hasn’t gotten the ball all that much as a senior slotback.
As a junior in former coach Mark Pinzone’s spread offense, Canedy rushed 132 times for 1,102 yards (8.3-yard average) and nine touchdowns, almost all on jet sweeps.
When Dennison arrived, Buckeye incorporated a lot of I-formation sets, so Canedy has just 37 carries for 313 yards (8.5 average) and three TDs, plus 17 receptions for 266 yards (15.6) and three scores.
Many players with dreams of a big individual senior season would have pouted, but Canedy readily did what his coach felt was best for the team.
“I just adapted,” he said.
“I play my role on the team. I knew it was going to be a change from last year, but I was ready for it.”
Despite once getting a “C” in language arts while in junior high and two non-A’s in high school, Canedy is smart enough to know he’s a big reason why quarterback Adam Fauver has 1,012 yards rushing and 1,026 passing, and why tailback Dominic Monaco has 613 yards and 13 TDs on the ground.
No. 86 won’t mention any of that, but he knows opposing coaches still spend a ton of time game-planning for him.
“I’ve definitely learned being a decoy is important,” he said. “People follow me. I’m fine with being a decoy. It’s better than blocking.”
Canedy broke into a huge smile after mentioning the blocking part, but his coach also grins at the team-first attitude of the Bucks’ fastest and most athletic player.
“That speaks a lot to his character,” Dennison said. “He’s so unselfish. If you have guys like that, you can win. He understands that he’s such a big focus for every game. That leads to a lot of (Fauver’s) runs, a lot of play action. That’s because of him.
“He’s as big a part of our offense then as when he touches the ball. That’s hard for a high school kid to understand sometimes, but he knows he’s helping the team.”
Canedy is most dangerous when returning kickoffs, but no one kicks to him. He’s returned just three all season, for a whopping 60.7-yard average, and two have gone to the house.
“I hate it,” Canedy said of teams squib kicking or simply kicking out of bounds. “I wish they would kick it to me so I’d get more opportunities.”
Then the young man with a 37-inch vertical leap smiled again while adding, “I’d like to make it 3-for-4 (returns for touchdowns).”
That’s as remotely close to bravado as Canedy will ever come, because that’s simply not his nature. And that’s true whether he’s playing football, participating in track and field or serving as an undersized center for the basketball team.
“This will be my 13th year in coaching, and he’s as dependable as any kid I’ve ever coached,” Buckeye athletic director and basketball coach Tom Harrington said. “He’s on time, he works his butt off and he’s unselfish. He’s a great teammate.
“For somebody his size, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kid jump better than him. He gets off the floor so quickly. He’s 6-1 on a good day, but he plays like he’s 6-6.”
For Canedy, sports are fun but also a means to an end. His college future will likely include high jumping and sprinting, but he’s way more concerned with making the grade in the classroom at a prestigious school.
That’s why, with something as mundane as calculus already out of the way, he’s taking his second college course while also carrying a high school load that includes Advanced Placement Statistics and AP History.
“Sports,” Canedy said, “are good to keep up my grades.”
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