FILE PHOTO
Former St. Mary’s star Jonathan Mola (right) will take his talents to the basketball team Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology.
By MIKE ALONGI
After two stellar seasons with the Spartans, former St. Mary’s basketball player Jonathan Mola has made a decision on where he will play his college basketball and he won’t be travelling too far from home. Mola has decided to play at Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in Boston, and there were several reasons for the choice.
Besides offering the major he would like to pursue, construction management, Mola is very familiar with BFIT’s head basketball coach Geoff Lerner.
“I’m very familiar with (Coach Lerner), he was my AAU coach in middle school,” Mola said. “I’ve known him for a number of years, so there’s definitely a comfortability factor there.”
But Lerner isn’t the only member of the BFIT basketball family that Mola is familiar with. Mola will also be joined by good friend and fellow Lynner Tommy Rijo, who committed to BFIT last week after a great high school career at Lynn English.
“I’ve known Tommy forever, we’ve played basketball together since we went to Breed (Middle School) together,” Mola said. “He’s one of my best friends, so being on a team with him again will be a great experience. It’s always great when you get to play on a team with one of your good friends, and I think going through the experience together will be good for the both of us.”
Mola is coming off two great seasons at St. Mary’s. After transferring from KIPP in his junior year before the 2016 basketball season, Mola was a key part of a starting lineup that led the Spartans to back-to-back Division 4 state championship appearances, winning in 2016 and falling short of the crown in 2017. Mola now hopes that those extra tournament games and big situations will help prepare him for the collegiate stage.
“I think that it will definitely have some kind of positive affect,” Mola said of the tournament experience. “Playing in the state title game in back-to-back years put me in a lot of different situations, so hopefully that will help prepare me for the next level.”
But Mola isn’t just resting on his tournament experience in his preparation for college basketball. He knows that he has to put in both the physical and mental work if he wants to keep improving.
“The main thing for me is to just keep working on my game,” Mola said. “One of the big things about playing in all of those big tournament games was they put me in a whole different mindset about how seriously I took the game. Now all I’m focused on is working hard to make myself the best player I can be in order to help my team win games.”