A doctor in a Spanish hospital told Aaron Toomey his basketball career was over four years ago.
Amherst College’s all-time leading scorer suffered a head injury in practice playing for Fuenlabrada in Madrid near the end of 2014. The team’s trainer told him it was just a concussion and to go home. Toomey was rushed to the hospital later that night with a fractured skull and blood clots on his brain. He woke up from surgery the next day to the news that he couldn’t play anymore.
“It was pretty devastating sitting in front of that doctor hearing those words coming out of his mouth,” Toomey said.
His career seemed over, so Toomey flew back to the United States. He lived at home in Greensboro, North Carolina, for a few months until Amherst coach Dave Hixon called.
“I said, ‘No timetable, when you’re healthy, if you want to, come up here and coach with us,” Hixon said.
Knowing he wanted to get into coaching and stay involved with the game of basketball, Toomey agreed. Hixon was happy to have his former point guard and 2013 national player of the year on the coaching staff for the 2015-16 season.
“He was made for it,” Hixon said. “He’s got a brilliant basketball mind, very thoughtful.”
As Toomey was coaching, the residual headaches from his injury subsided over the next 18-20 months. He started physical activity again and eventually started playing pickup basketball again.
“It took a long time. I missed playing the game, obviously, but there was nothing I could do about it,” Toomey said. “The more I did, the more comfortable I got with it. I started to get out on the court and play a little bit.”
Around that time about a year ago, his former coach at Amherst, Michael Rejniak, was watching The Basketball Tournament on ESPN. TBT, as it’s also known, is an open-application tournament founded in 2014 by Jonathan Mugar. Professionals based in Europe, collegiate alumni teams and teams sponsored by charity organizations play in a single-elimination bracket under modified NCAA rules for a $2 million winner-take-all prize.
“It’s everybody that is good that plays basketball that’s not in the NBA,” said Rejniak, who grew up in Southampton and played at Hampshire Regional.
The idea occurred to Rejniak that a team composed of former Division III standouts could hold their own. He started making contacts and quickly realized that he wasn’t going to do anything without players. One of his first calls was to Toomey, who he helped recruit at Amherst and coached his freshman year.
“To be honest, I wasn’t sure if he was interested in me as a player or interested in me helping him coach,” Toomey said. “Ever since the game had been taken from me over there in Spain, I’ve been itching to get out there and play some meaningful basketball again. It didn’t take me long at all once he asked me if I wanted to be a part of it to commit.”
Rejniak next recruited two-time Division III National Player of the Year Joey Flannery, who won a national championship with Babson in 2017, to the Team D3 squad.
In addition to Toomey and Flannery, Team D3 features players like Jeff Gibbs, who spent more than a decade playing professionally in Japan, former All-American Jonathan Ivy and Ben Strong, who has experience in the NBA D League with the Westchester Knicks.
“It’s a bunch of all these guys coming together from every walk of life, and it’s pretty cool,” Rejniak said. “These are guys that really know the game of basketball.”
One player the coach couldn’t recruit was Northampton and Amherst College grad Willy Workman, who currently plays professionally in Israel. Workman declined because of family commitments, Rejniak said.
With the roster in place, Rejniak and Team D3 had to secure a spot in TBT. There are four methods to obtain a bid: winning a regional championship the previous year, buying one of four available spots in each region for $5,000, having one of the top nine largest fan bases in a region or receiving an at-large bid.
The at-large bid and buying a spot were quickly eliminated, along with the obvious automatic berth as a regional champion.
“We’re D3 so we don’t have any money,” Rejniak said. “That wasn’t the way we were gonna get in.”
So they campaigned for fan support. Rejniak was in contact with representatives from TBT and they shared previously successful strategies with him. The team established a Twitter account — @WeAreD3TBT — and received endorsements throughout the Division III community and even from the likes of ESPN analysts Fran Fraschilla and Seth Greenberg.
“The D3 community is very tight knit and supportive of one another. That’s how it got going,” Rejniak said. “Everything started to gain traction.”
Team D3 received the fourth most votes in the West Region and were accepted into the field. The team is seeded 13th and will face No. 4 Sons of Westwood, a UCLA alumni team headlined by former NBA champion Matt Barnes, at 9:20 p.m. Saturday steaming on the WatchESPN app.
“That’s exactly what we wanted. We don’t want to go play against some no-name guys and win a game no one is going to give us credit for,” Toomey said. “We want to play against the best and prove we can play at a high level.”
The team started a GoFundMe campaign in January that has raised more than $10,000 to pay for logistics like flights and meals.
“Early on I knew if we were going to do this, I wanted to do it right,” Rejniak said. “I wanted to provide the guys with as big of an opportunity as possible on a platform Division III doesn’t get often.”
Team D3 had a training camp in Boston the last weekend in June to get acquainted. It did not start well.
“Everyone on the team in college and in the pros has been the go-to guy on every team they’ve played on. Having nine of those guys on the court can be tough,” Toomey said. “We knew everyone is a really smart basketball player and knows the game really well. It kind of worked itself out.”
In addition to the potential $2 million payoff, some members of Team D3 are trying for an opportunity with other professional teams, and some are recently out of college trying to take the next step in their basketball career. Toomey wants some closure on his.
“It’s one thing to end your career on your own terms. It’s another to be told your career is over,” he said. “This gives me a chance, in my mind at least, to end on my own terms.”
He’s happy coaching and will continue with Hixon and the Mammoths when TBT is over.
“I love it, and this is what I want to do,” Toomey said.
Until then, he, Rejniak and the rest of the team are carrying the flag for Division III basketball on a national stage.
“Maybe they’re not quite as tall or athletic, but skill-wise I think we can match up with anybody,” Toomey said. “It’s a bigger picture than the 10 guys that are going to be on the floor. It’s for all of D3 basketball.”
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com.