Throughout a prolific high school career that saw him garner All-KingCo honors in multiple sports and earn Division I scholarship offers, Kyle Keyes never thought about life after the game.

Like so many others who find stardom at a young age, his focus was on preparing himself for a career at a major college program and someday the NBA. But while his game rapidly developed on the basketball court, Keyes soon learned the work done outside the lines is just as crucial.

“I had a lot of great coaching and played with great players,” Keyes said. “But I didn’t have a lot of guidance with where I should go to school and how to prepare.”

Without the board scores and grades to gain admission into any of the schools that had extended an offer, Keyes’ road to the pros took its first detour with a stop at Edmonds Community College, far from the national stage of major college basketball.

Things seemed back on track when Keyes landed at the University of Montana two years later, but again the path was riddled with obstacles. Injuries from a year at Bellevue College followed Keyes to Missoula, reaching an apex when he tore the Anterior Cruciate Ligament in his left knee only a week before the season.

“It was a humbling experience,” he said. “I started thinking there was a possibility I could do something else besides play basketball.”

Uncertain about his own future as a player, Keyes still knew he wanted to remain in the game and give future collegiate prospects the counsel he never received.

The result was the resurrection and expansion of i-Ball.

Keyes began the basketball-focused enterprise in 2003 to host private lessons for youth players. With his playing days seemingly behind him, Keyes wanted to begin hosting larger clinics with his coaching staff and also start a team that would compete in the Amateur Athletic Union, which has nearly all of the top prospects in the country on team in its circuit around the country.

But more than expanding his basketball empire into coaching, Keyes wanted to provide a program that included assistance with the entire recruiting and college selection process, not just the part that took place on Jon Kaneshiro, who met Keyes as a seventh grader and is now the only other full-time staff member of i-Ball, said Keyes’ ability to relate his love of basketball is one of the many reasons he has remained involved in the program for nearly a decade. Kaneshiro is now the associate head coach with i-Ball and also helps coordinate the AAU program and youth camps.

“He’s been a great mentor and friend,” Kaneshiro said. “In high school, my role on the team wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Kyle was the one that really kept me going and loving basketball.”

Kaneshiro, who did not continue his career in organized basketball after high school, gives Keyes’ philosophy merit by proving he is out to accomplish more than attaching his name to the next future NBA Draft Lottery pick.

Keyes added that a mandatory grade review will soon apply to all of the five to 10 AAU teams i-Ball fields in a given year and that for those who need it, tutoring could also be available. Along with helping his players navigate their work in the classroom, Keyes wants to make sure they also understand the sometimes complex process of gaining college admission, financial aid packages and the expectations that come in a college classroom.

“We’ve seen improvement in virtually all of our players who are willing and interested in learning,” Keyes said. “Obviously, the parents love it.”

Not only are those parents keeping their own children in the program, they are spreading the word about i-Ball.

When Keyes hosted his first tryout in 2009, he had five staff members ready to assist with the camp and program. Only three kids showed up.

“At our last tryout, we had over 100 kids,” Keyes said.

Along with the AAU program, i-Ball hosts clinics and camps that bring in more than 100 youngsters every month, including current programs through the city of Bellevue. While Keyes has shifted his focus to coaching in recent years, a tryout with an NBA Developmental League team and American Basketball Association team could soon push him from the sidelines to the court for one final run at his professional dream.

“I keep an even keel when it comes to that stuff,” Keyes said of the possibility of getting back on the road to the pros. “We’ll see what happens with it.”

Regardless of how he fares at the tryouts, Keyes knows one thing for certain. When he walks away from the game again, he will already have a plan.