Jahmyl Telfort takes the call from La Presse on a Tuesday evening, the only day of the week when he has no class. The Quebecer has just completed his third season with the Northeastern University Huskies in Boston, where he is studying psychology. On the court, his performances earned him a selection to the All-CAA Third Team All-Star.
On March 2, Huskies head coach Bill Coen told Northeastern Global News that Telfort is the “heart and soul of the program” and a “coach’s dream.” These words deserve attention. The first question being, who is Jahmyl Telfort?
He is the sixth in a large family of nine children; seven boys and two girls. The clan lived in Montreal North, then in Rivière-des-Prairies in a three-bedroom apartment before moving to a house in Boucherville when Jahmyl was 5 years old. It was on the South Shore that the brothers, who until then practiced athletics, discovered basketball.
“The three oldest started playing, so the four youngest, we followed them,” the 21-year-old explains, as if it were quite usual for seven members of the same siblings to opt for the same sport.
In elementary school, Jahmyl Telfort mostly played volleyball. Basketball was just a hobby then. His main goal was to be better than his brother Jacob.
“He kept beating me and my three oldest brothers were always teasing me saying ‘you can’t beat Jacob!’ It pissed me off. I just wanted to practice, practice, practice,” he says.
When Jahmyl entered Secondary 1 at De Mortagne High School, he found himself on the same team as Jacob. That year, basketball took a bigger place in his life. The following summer, his mother enrolled him in sports studies.
After graduating from high school in Boucherville, Jahmyl headed to Toronto with another Quebecer, Keesawn Barthélémy. The friends, who already knew each other from training together at Parc-Extension, did their secondary 6 at Thornlea School.
The following year, Telfort headed to New Hampshire to complete Secondary 7 at a private prep school. Then the college offers started coming to him; he settled on Northeastern.
In his first season, Telfort only played 18 games due to the pandemic. He finished the campaign averaging 11.8 points, 3.8 rebounds and 1.4 assists per game, in addition to making 36.6% of his three-point shots. The health situation forcing him to stay locked up in his residence most of the time, the back was able to focus on basketball and his studies.
When we spoke, it had been a few weeks since the end of the Huskies’ season, Telfort’s third in the NCAA. In a difficult campaign from a collective point of view, the Quebecer excelled. He had the best performances of his young career, averaging 16.4 points, 4.5 rebounds and 2.2 assists in 30 games. On December 29, he scored 31 points in a home win. His versatility and ability to score in different ways set him apart.
“It is sure that statistically, it is my best season, he admits. But it was also hard because we didn’t win many games. We had a young team this year with six first-year players. »
In the Northeastern Global News article, Bill Coen praised the work ethic of Telfort, who gets up at 5 a.m. to shoot free throws. This diligence, the Bouchervillois developed it thanks to a combination of three factors: “my father, my brothers and the Parc-Ex program”, he lists.
At Parc-Extension, the young man saw Luguentz Dort at work, with whom he became friends. That same Dort signed a five-year, $87 million deal with the Oklahoma City Thunder last year.
Over the years, Telfort never really thought about the NBA. His only desire was to train to improve, to see how far his talent would take him.
“It’s when you hear people talk to you about the NBA that you think, oh, maybe I’ll be good enough. But it’s never something I thought about. »
Suddenly, the dream of the NBA seems accessible to him.
“I’m confident I’ll get there. If I keep working, put myself in a good position, it will help me achieve this goal. It would be a good thing. »
Jahmyl Telfort announced he was entering the transfer portal; he will therefore leave the Huskies with two years of eligibility remaining. “I just think it was time to take a new step, a new start, to see where I can go. My coaches understood,” he told La Presse.
