Trey Sagester developed into a 2,000-point scorer and Division II recruit under the watchful eye of father and coach Josh Sagester. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Trey Sagester kept working hard and overcame the recruiting delays caused by the transfer portal to earn an offer from a new coach at a Division II program in Michigan. He plans to develop his body and his game and take advantage of the opportunity.
New Madison, OH – Future uncertainties often remind Trey Sagester of his father’s wisdom.
He’s heard the words in his mind many times, like when he enters the Tri-Village High School gym for another round of 500 to 1,000 shots. He needed the reminder often during his all-state senior season when no college basketball coach offered him a roster spot.
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He fell back on his father’s words every time he was asked about his college plans. He could only respond by shrugging his shoulders and saying he’s hopeful a coach gives him an opportunity.
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State football and basketball and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com. Follow on X @jw_gilbert
Josh Sagester, father and coach of Trey, the two-time Division VI player of the year in Ohio, repeated his words of wisdom Monday while talking about his son’s journey to find a college basketball team.
“Good things do happen to good people,” he said. “If you work really, really hard, you’re going to get an opportunity.”
Basketball filled Trey’s teenage life with good opportunities. But for a player with his accomplishments and winning pedigree, his college basketball future – if he was to have one – felt mysteriously uncertain. Hadn’t he done enough to merit some offers?
Still, Trey lifted weights and worked on his skills. He didn’t give up. He believed what his father told him about good things and hard work.
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Finally, in early May, Trey’s opportunity came. He received a partial scholarship to play at NCAA Division II Ferris State in Big Rapids, Michigan. Relief saturated the Sagester family.
Trey’s story isn’t unique. Opportunities for athletes like him began to change in 2018 when the NCAA created the transfer portal, an online process permitting athletes to declare their intent to transfer without needing permission from their coach.
The portal became big news and changed the landscape of college athletics in 2021 when the NCAA removed the restriction of sitting out a season after transferring. Players began transferring at a prolific rate, many of them more than once. The new rule changed the pace of recruiting for high school basketball players.
“I can’t make a coach offer me, I can’t make a coach see what I do well, and, obviously, I can’t control the landscape of college basketball.” – Trey Sagester on the lack of recruiting offers he received.
Coaches must win to remain employed, so they first try to improve their roster with experienced players from the portal. Plus, the constant movement means coaches must retool their rosters year to year far more than they did in the past. High school players, other than the highly rated four-stars and five-stars, often must wait for offers until rosters begin to take shape with transfers and coaches have one or two spots left.
Then, and only then, college coaches at all levels begin to offer players who don’t check the obvious star-potential boxes. They are the tweeners.
Are they Division III or Division II? Are they Division II or low-level Division I? Are they mid-major or high-major Division I? Does a single trait or two create questions in the minds of coaches whose jobs depend on recruiting?
Trey, and players across the nation, find themselves stuck in these middles. The silence isn’t because they haven’t been discovered. Online video of every prospect exists. Coaches watch them on the summer AAU circuit. Instead, players like Trey wait for a roster spot – sometimes the last one – and for a coach to trust his instincts that a sidelined prospect might be great late addition.
“I can’t make a coach offer me, I can’t make a coach see what I do well, and, obviously, I can’t control the landscape of college basketball,” Trey said.
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All Trey could do was control what he could control – work hard to be the best player possible. Still, dealing with unknowns isn’t easy for athletes and their families.
“It’s been a stressful month, month and a half,” Josh said. “We’ve had to have patience and understand that it’s a different time.”
Josh’s wisdom to work hard, expect good things and bet on yourself was passed on to Trey through personal experience.
Tri-Village’s Trey Sagester learned about the hard work from the example of his father who took the junior-college road to play Division I college basketball.
Josh played basketball at Brookville High School, scored 1,800 points and dreamed of a four-year Division I career, but few under-six-foot guards receive Division I offers. He scored 41 points in front of Ohio University coach Larry Hunter. But Hunter told him he was too small and not strong enough.
Still, Josh’s goal dominated his teenage dreams enough to go to college 18 hours from home and prove himself to coaches like Hunter. His destination in 1997 was the junior college route at Dawson Community College in Glendive, Montana, on the North Dakota border.
Josh’s time in Montana earned him a scholarship at Division I Mercer in Macon, Georgia. He played 61 games for the Bears, started 40 of them, and shot 40.8% from 3-point range.
“Not an easy route,” Josh said. “But I wasn’t going to stop. I bet on myself and was able to do things that I wanted to do.”
Trey hears similar objections about size. He’s plenty tall enough and long enough at 6-foot-3 to play in Division II. But he has a slender and narrow build. That, in addition to the portal effect, made college coaches unsure if he could endure the more physical college game.
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“When I get to Ferris the trainer will help me, and I will eventually get stronger and grow into my body,” Trey said. “I’m excited about getting stronger. When I was younger, I didn’t buy into it as much, but now that’s what a lot of people are looking at. That’s the separator.”
Trey began lifting weights in a sports performance class his freshman year. He will get plenty more weight training in Ferris’ high-level facilities that have helped produce four Division II football national championships since 2021.
Trey Sagester said getting stronger in high school helped him get shots off more easily and hold off defenders.
Trey began his high school career as a 6-foot freshman coming off the bench and scoring 9.2 points a game. The next three seasons, as he grew stronger, he averaged 21.7, 22.7 and 24.3, surpassing 2,000 points. He was always known for his 3-point proficiency, but his mid-range game and driving ability became more efficient as he grew stronger.
His confidence in his ability to make shots from anywhere makes him believe the amount he can bench press doesn’t matter. Still, he wants to get stronger. He experienced in high school how added strength made him better.
“It allowed me to get my shots off easier, and I was able to hold off defenders longer, but also that came with playing,” he said. “Obviously, at the college level I’m going to have to adapt to the game, and over time my body will get used to that and be able to do what the team needs in order to win.”
Still, Trey is betting on himself as the ballplayer more than the weightlifter.
“I don’t know if it all comes down to strength,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just about the heart and what you can do to get the job done.”
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Trey showed heart as a skin-and-bones freshman who was the target of more mature and physical opponents. He credits football with developing the toughness he says will make the bet on himself pay off.
Trey first put on football pads in the fourth grade and played quarterback. During his two seasons as the varsity starter, he passed for 5,790 yards and 74 touchdowns, leading the Patriots to 20 victories. He considered college football, but his body type created more concerns for football coaches than basketball coaches.
Playing football, however, created great memories for Trey, made Friday nights special and gave him something he needed to compete in college basketball.
Trey Sagester signs a letter of intent to play at Ferris State on Monday while his parents, Josh and Traci Sagester, watch the culmination of a dream.
“It developed a side of toughness that other sports don’t,” he said.
Toughness is among Trey’s attributes new Ferris State head coach Brooks Miller admires. He also likes Trey’s scoring ability and basketball IQ, and as Josh said, “He values skill level.” But like all the coaches who didn’t offer Trey an opportunity, Miller knows Trey must get stronger to be the type of player he has been in high school. But Trey has time to grow in the developmental program Miller wants to build.
“Trey and I discussed taking a leap of faith to come up here and develop for a year and see where it leads,” Miller said. “He has high IQ and has shown he can score. Once he gets stronger, he will get the chance to prove he can do it on this level.”
Ferris’ interest in Trey is recent. Miller, a Northwest Ohio native, was hired on April 7 after a season as an assistant at Central Michigan. Before that he was a two-time Division III coach of the year and 2024 national champion at Trine University in Angola, Indiana.
While at Trine, Miller invited Trey to summer camps, but the dates conflicted with Trey’s AAU schedule. Trey also heard from a variety of Division III and II schools as well as a couple of low-level Division I schools. But his only other offer came from Division II Lake Superior State in Michigan about three weeks before Miller contacted Trey. But a week later Lake Superior pulled the offer in favor of a transfer.
Trey Sagester is surrounded by members of his family who have watched him grow up playing basketball.
Meanwhile, Miller began adding to his roster of four returning players with seven transfers and five freshmen. Miller never saw Trey play in person. But he liked what he saw on video and invited the Sagesters for an official visit on May 5. Trey liked everything about Ferris from Miller to the admissions advisor to the accounting program to the facilities to the two future teammates he met.
Miller had pen and paper ready.
But first, Trey listened to Miller tell him he liked his ability to score and create space for others, his IQ and his toughness. Trey liked Miller’s explanation of his style of play that emphasizes ball movement.
“Spending the day with Coach Miller, Trey felt really, really good about the program, the coach and his vision for him and for the team,” Josh said.
Trey, on that day, witnessed his father’s wisdom that opportunity eventually follows hard work. So, convinced by everything he had seen and heard, Trey bet on himself that he can play at the Division II level and signed a letter of intent before he left campus.
“He values what I do well, and that was something that in the recruiting process I was really looking for in a coach, and obviously the relationship between me and him, I think we can build a good one,” Trey said. “Most people didn’t want to take a chance on me, and he’s willing take a chance on me. I’ll go to battle for him.”
On Monday, Trey sat at a table in the old Tri-Village gym flanked by his father and mother Traci for the ceremonial signing while wearing Ferris State T-shirts. Then he posed for photos with his parents, several iterations of family groupings and his teammates.
Trey received no guarantees of playing time or even how soon he might get on the court. But, armed with his father’s wisdom, he plans to work hard in the weight room, learn the much higher level of play required in college and take advantage of the smallest opportunities to the biggest ones.
“Good things happen to people who work hard,” Trey said. “That’s in life, at your job, or even playing sports. If you work hard and are willing to sacrifice a lot, at some point something good is going to happen to you.”
Trey Sagester’s Tri-Village teammates came Monday to help celebrate his signing with Ferris State.