Sharp shooter to hall

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of articles on the seven individuals and one team being inducted into the Yuba College Athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday.

When Trent Tilby was growing up in Yuba City, he and his brother, Shown, would square off on the basketball court for a little one-on-one.

The problem for the younger Tilby was he gave up too many inches.

“In order for me to beat him, I had to shoot from far away,” said Tilby, explaining the beginning of a skill – the long-range shot – that carried him all the way to the Yuba College Athletic Hall of Fame.

The 1987 Yuba City High graduate, who went on to play at Menlo College, will be inducted on Saturday.

“I was surprised,” Tilby said when his former coach Joe McCarron called him with the news. “It was something I would have never expected, and of course, I’m quite humbled and honored.”

Tilby said he attended McCarron’s induction into the Hall of Fame in 2002. Even then his thoughts were not so much about whether he would ever be enshrined, but rather which of his teammates might be selected.

“I want the people up there to know that I am truly honored by this,” Tilby said.

Tilby, who played basketball for Yuba from 1987 to 1989, set a number of school shooting marks in those years, including three-point shooting percentage for a season (57.1), for a career (48.6), twice hitting nine treys in a game and finishing with 154 bombs in his two years.

He is third on the all-time scoring list with 583 points in a season, and sixth for his career with 840.

Tilby remembers his freshmen year, even before he was a starter, Yuba won its own tournament.

“We were a new team trying to find ourselves. ... I remember sitting there, and in those string of games, with coach McCarron telling us we could play, and then we won the tournament,” Tilby said.

In his last game at Yuba, Tilby poured in 41 points.

“We lost the game, but just feeling good about beng able to perform like that was exhilarating,” Tilby said.

At Menlo, he was a two-year starter who was elected captain and most inspirational as a senior.

But Tilby will tell you it was basketball that inspired him.

“I excelled in both baseball and basketball, and played baseball all the way up to my freshman year when I made a decision to concentrate on basketball,” Tilby said.

He said he just loves the sport.

“I played basketball everyday for hours. In my senior year, because I had already completed all my (core) classes, I had three elective periods, and all three were basketball.”

Tilby said his success early on certainly motivated him, but there was more.

“From a very early age, I remember hearing people say I’m not going to succeed in basketball: I wasn’t tall enough; I didn’t jump very high,” Tilby said. “But I always had a sense of proving people wrong.”

He also got a kick out seeing the expression on the face of an opponent who thought he could dominate Tilby because of his size, only to have the 3s rain down on him.

Tilby said he never worried about what he was not able to do, instead he focused on what he could do, which was handling the basketball and shooting it.

Some of his fondest memories from his days at Yuba City High are about the annual Mel Good Tournament, which the Honkers won his senior year in 1986, just one of seven Yuba City teams to accomplish that in the tourney’s 43-year history. He was named to the all-tournament team.

More fond are his memories of coach Jerome Circo.

“He was a great influence on me, and still is,” Tilby said.

Tilby said basketball continued to prepare him for life at Yuba College. He said the dynamics of a team – the good times and the bad ones – are very similar to that of a family.

His experiences with a lifetime of teammates helped him prepare for a career as a marriage and family therapist in Turlock.

Tilby and his wife, Nancy – a standout athlete at Yuba City High as well – have five children.

And Tilby still mixes it up on the basketball court.

“He plays for our church and they just won their league championship,” Nancy Tilby said.

They are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which Trent Tilby is a bishop.