Damian Chong Qui overcame adversity to lead Mount St. Mary’s to NCAA tournament

Toward the end of a group call with the Mount St. Mary’s coaching staff, Damian Chong Qui’s father asked the question that had been playing on his mind.

He knew there were no scholarships available for his son that upcoming season. But if Chong Qui played well, could he earn one? Could his preferred walk-on spot be the first step toward something greater? Mountaineers coach Dan Engelstad was honest. He couldn’t make any guarantees to the father of the 5-foot-8 Baltimore point guard on the other end of the line.

Chong Qui had no other Division I offers to fall back on, no clear path to the dream he had long held. When he and his father got off the call, he was unsure whether his basketball career was done.

“I don’t know if I want to do it,” Chong Qui told his father.

“Nobody’s really even offered you this,” Edward Chong Qui, Damian’s father, replied. “This is an opportunity. You take advantage of it.”

When Damian Chong Qui walks onto the court Thursday at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Indiana, his thoughts may return to his father’s words. Everything Chong Qui’s done in the three years since that call is because he took advantage of that opportunity, despite his initial misgivings.

So much of Chong Qui’s life has been filled with adversity. But he hasn’t let that stop him. Now he’s where he’d always dreamt of being — leading Mount St. Mary’s into the NCAA tournament, with a First Four matchup against Texas Southern on the horizon.

“I listened to him,” Chong Qui said, “and I’m here.”

When Chong Qui was 4, his mother was murdered in Baltimore. His father was paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot in the back in 2010.

Those moments could’ve derailed any young person’s ambitions, but tragedy only brought father and son closer. Chong Qui describes his dad as his best friend, saying the two have a relationship more like a couple of brothers. They talk on the phone three or four times a day.

After Mount St. Mary’s earned an NCAA tournament berth, CBS interviewed Chong Qui and Engelstad. Then they surprised Chong Qui, adding his father to the interview.

“I want you to go out there and show the world what a kid from Baltimore can do when he’s dedicated, put the work in,” Edward Chong Qui told his son on CBS. “And have fun, man. I love you.”

After Chong Qui walked on at Mount St. Mary’s, the point guard soon earned a large role. He started the team’s final 24 games, setting himself up for a breakout sophomore campaign. He earned the Northeast Conference’s Most Improved Player award last season, averaging 12.2 points and 3.9 assists per game.

He’s been even bigger for the Mountaineers this season, especially as the team navigated through two coronavirus-related pauses. 

They lost Jalen Gibbs, then the team’s leading scorer, when he opted out midway through the season. Guard Dakota Leffew broke his wrist and guard Deandre Thomas missed time with a separated shoulder.

But Chong Qui is averaging 15.1 points and 5.45 assists each contest, and he scored 21 in last weekend’s NEC championship game against Bryant. Performances like those propelled a team that finished 12-10 in a topsy-turvy season into March Madness.

“They are tough, they are resilient, they battled through a ton — not just this season, I mean, our upperclassmen have battled through a ton these past few years to get our program to this point,” Engelstad said.

Before this season, Chong Qui estimated his father might’ve missed just three of his basketball games his entire life. But with the coronavirus, parents weren’t allowed to watch live in Emmitsburg, Maryland. That’ll change, though, with the team in Indiana, and Chong Qui’s excited to see his father in the stands again.

The Mountaineers understand how big this moment is, too. 

When they take the floor Thursday, they will play the first NCAA tournament game in two years.

But it’s not a spotlight Chong Qui will shrink from.

Three years ago, when he was offered a position as a preferred walk-on, these were the kind of possibilities he’d only imagined.

Now he’s living his dream on the national stage — validation for the leap of faith his father urged him to take.

“The adversity made me who I am,” Chong Qui said. “How you respond defines who you are, shows your true colors. It shows what your true personality is. And this is who I am, and for a lot of my life, I tried to run away from that story. And I kind of, over the last two years, embraced it.”