MCC's Stewart elects to play on

If you have some bad news for Derrick Stewart, he’d rather you just keep it to yourself.

Especially if what you have to say might keep him off the basketball court.

The Marshalltown Community College sophomore will play the remainder of the men’s basketball season with an injured wrist.

Just how badly it’s injured remains a mystery, however, with Stewart refusing an X-ray earlier this week.

“I’ve been working too hard to mess with my season,” said the Detroit native, who will be in the starting lineup tonight when MCC hosts Iowa Western CC at 7 p.m. in an ICCAC D-I tilt.

Stewart wasn’t worried about finding out his wrist was broken or sprained.

There was one thing he didn’t want to hear, though.

“That I can’t play,” he laughed. “Even if they did (say that), I wasn’t going to (listen).

“This is my last year, I’m a sophomore. I got to get somewhere. I’m not letting anything stop me.”

The toughness of the 5-foot-10 guard was never questioned, even before he began playing through pain.

“Anybody who wants to take a charge every time the ball is driven at him is a pretty tough guy,” said MCC head coach Brynjar Brynjarsson. “It’s hard to out-work a guy like that.”

Stewart said he’s never missed a game during his basketball career.

“That’s just how I’ve been raised. Fight through it, play through adversity,” he said. “Just got to keep going because nobody’s going to do it for me, so I’ve got to do it myself.

“No excuses.”

Stewart, who injured the wrist taking a charge during a win over Waldorf JV, admitted that contact to his wrist causes a considerable amount of pain.

Not that it matters.

“He hasn’t changed at all,” said Brynjarsson of Stewart’s appetite for taking a charge.

“He’s going to play the same way no matter what.”

With a diminutive frame on a team endowed with height, Stewart often goes overlooked on the floor, all the while doing the little things that bring success.

Then, there are days like the one he had against then-No. 1 ranked Indian Hills, when he poured in 21 points to keep MCC with the Warriors early.

“Derrick’s a kid that’s always the guy that doesn’t get noticed,” Brynjarsson said, “but at the end of the day he shows up in the box score.”

So a little thing like a broken/sprained/ailing wrist isn’t going to slow him down.

“It hurts,” he said, “but once you get to that mental state, that you’ve got to play through it, nothing is going to stop me.”