Full Circle: Jack Reese, Elijah Wingfield End Up Playing Basketball Together At Baruch College

Jack Reese and Elijah Wingfield both vividly remember playing against and with one another as early as sixth grade in SYS games, and then again in high school and Long Island Elite travel AAU games, when Reese starred for East Hampton and Wingfield for Southampton.

Completely by happenstance, things came full circle this winter when the East End basketball duo wound up playing basketball together at Baruch College in New York City. Reese began his college career at Baruch straight out of East Hampton High School in 2018, while Wingfield had a more roundabout way of joining the school and team. After spending two years at SUNY Geneseo, where he was a member of both the men’s basketball and track and field teams, Wingfield decided to transfer to Baruch.

Reese and Wingfield helped the Bearcats to yet another successful season when they defeated Lehman College, 75-69, in overtime to win what was their third City University of New York Athletic Conference Championship since 2015 in February. Baruch has been consistent in conference tournament play since the 2014-2015 season, either winning the conference title or finishing as runner-up in five of the past seven seasons, the 2020-2021 season notwithstanding since it was canceled due to the pandemic.

Baruch wound up losing, 88-50, to No. 4 Christopher Newport University in the first round of the NCAA Division III Championship Tournament — Christopher Newport eventually advanced to the Elite Eight. But it was a fun season playing together once again, albeit for one year most likely, both Reese and Wingfield agreed.

“Me and Elijah are good friends. We’ve known each other since we were little kids and have been playing together since elementary school, basically,” Reese explained. “He sent me a text over the summer, asking questions about Baruch. Said, ‘I’m looking at Baruch. I might go there.’ Immediately I got in touch with [head coach John Alesi] and told him Elijah was looking to come here, put them in touch and then it was pretty much a wait-and-see game. Elijah decided to make the move and he was in.

“It’s pretty funny because I’ve known Elijah forever, but at this point I was also close with my teammates at Baruch, so it was like two worlds colliding,” he continued. “As I told my friends and teammates, it’s hard to hate Elijah, and everyone pretty much fell in love with him instantly making it pretty easy for him to gel with the team. Having him around, it was even better than I thought it would be.”

Wingfield concurred.

“It was definitely awesome,” he said of playing with Reese. “It kind of all came full circle, playing SYS basketball in sixth grade to traveling the country together playing AAU ball and then winning the conference championship together this past season. He’s been a big part of my basketball career. He’s a great teammate, a great guy to play with, and that definitely translates to the type of player he is on the court.”

As previously mentioned, though, it’s most likely a one-and-done deal for both players, with Reese set to graduate at the end of the school year. Although he has an extra year of eligibility, like all college athletes who missed out on a season due to the pandemic, Reese said he doesn’t expect to use it and will instead start looking for a full-time career connected to his finance degree.

“I guess it’s probably over,” Reese said of his competitive basketball career. “I’ve started applying for jobs … I don’t think I’ll be playing competitively anymore. It’s bittersweet. When my last game ended, I didn’t really have a lot of emotion. But my entire life has been wrapped around my basketball schedule and now it’s all over. I’ve played with my dad and my brother since I was a kid, had my whole high school career, my whole college career and it just evaporates with one sound of the buzzer. I’m happy with my career, though. There’s only so much you can do.”

Wingfield almost didn’t transfer to Baruch after resurrecting his track career in his final year at Geneseo. A former Southampton teammate, Timmy Alejo, had transferred to Geneseo from URI and joined the track team there. With Wingfield showing signs of being an elite long and triple jumper back in high school, Alejo convinced Wingfield to join the Geneseo track team for a season, and he did.

After just his third meet, Wingfield started jumping close to 20 feet, and recruitment letters from large Division I track programs from all over the country started pouring in. Wingfield now had a tough decision to make: should he continue playing basketball or make the jump to track full time?

“I had five or six Division I schools who were serious about me joining their teams as a transfer,” he said. “But I realized, I spent all this time playing basketball, which was my true passion, and I just needed to figure that out for myself.”

During the canceled 2022-2021 season, Wingfield tore the meniscus in one of his knees, which required surgery and a long rehabilitation process. He admitted he didn’t feel 100 percent until this past January, but he was able to get through the season healthy and is looking forward to a full season with the Bearcats next winter.

Wingfield, a finance major interested in a career in investment banking upon graduation, said he’s looking forward to having former Geneseo teammate Michael Gannon transfer in and join him at Baruch.

“I was practicing and everything to start this past season, but I was still getting used to the real impact of the game on my knee,” Wingfield said of his injury. “The game wasn’t as fluid as it had been for me, and coach let me know it would have an impact on my playing time, and we both understood the situation and that it was also a transition period for me to understand Baruch’s system. But this upcoming season, I’m not looking to do anything specific. Whether I’m in the starting lineup or not, I just want to end my college career on a high note and be able to progress to where I was before the injury. Whatever role we need to have another championship season next year I’m willing to do.”