Utah Valley Wolverines center Fardaws Aimaq is your run-of-the-mill 6-foot-11, Afghan-Canadian pro basketball prospect with a black belt in mixed martial arts and a deep devotion to Islam living in a college community of 41,000 undergrads — more than 70% of whom are Mormon — in Orem, Utah.
Just another college kid at heart.
The thing is, that heart, along with a coach in Mark Madsen who once went toe-to-toe with Shaquille O’Neal on a daily basis, has helped turn Aimaq into a legitimate pro prospect and one of the best rebounders in college basketball.
Aimaq’s story begins in bucolic British Columbia, literally and figuratively about as far as possible from the upbringing his father, Faramarz, endured. Raised in Herat, Afghanistan, the nation’s third-most populous city, during the Soviet-Afghan War (an occupation that claimed the lives of an estimated 2 million Afghans), Faramarz Aimaq fled his homeland in 1989 at the age of 19. One of thousands of refugees to leave Afghanistan, he settled in Vancouver after stops in Hamburg, Germany, and Toronto. He later married his wife, Shahnaz, and raised two sons, Fardaws and Faisal, in the western Canadian province.
Late to basketball, “Big Maple,” as Fardaws Aimaq is now affectionately known, spent his younger years developing a mixed martial arts skill set in a variety of disciplines. But by his freshman year of high school, the growing Aimaq was drawn to competitive hoops.
“The one thing I loved about basketball was the team aspect of it,” Aimaq said. “I had never experienced that in MMA, where you train by yourself, but basketball taught me you have to rely on other people. The concept of ‘team’ was very appealing.”
Following a year of prep school in Bridgton, Maine, his college career began at Mercer University in 2018. Aimaq appeared in 29 games as a freshman (five…
Source : espn
