Freshman year of high school is a unique time for all boys and girls.

It is a time to be nervous yet anxious, excited and worried, but most of all, high school comes with uncertainty.

Today, Patch’s Athlete of the Week award is presented to a freshman who is making a name for himself on the hardwood.

Against players twice his size and some even four years older than him, guard Dashaun Washington looks overmatched.

But on the basketball floor, he is matching up just fine.

Washington has been “playing up” since his time in the Fort Lee rec program where he was a younger athlete already playing with 7^th and 8^th graders.

This season it happened again.

Instead of playing at the freshmen level with players his age, Washington was bumped up, not to the JV level, but all the way up to the varsity team.

This puts Washington in an elite class that not many freshmen have ever seen.

In the 20 years that John Ziemba has been a head coach at Fort Lee High School, he has only appointed five freshmen to move up, and that includes three of them this  year.

Washington is one of those rare members of the club, and coach Ziemba has lofty goals for Dashaun.

“He is going to be one of the best point guards we’ve ever had here,” the head coach said of his ninth grader. “He is only fourteen and probably weighs about 90 pounds out there. He’s going to be one of the best players at that position that we have ever had.” 

On Tuesday, Washington took control in the fourth quarter against Ridgefield Park, scoring all 10 of his points on the night.

Despite the Bridgemen losing that game by 12, the freshman stood out as one of the promising performances of the night.

After the game, Washington was very soft spoken about his play that evening.

“Well it was just my game,” the freshman said. “I’m just trying to do what I do on the court.”

Washington successfully followed up that performance with another impressive effort on Thursday night. In the second win of the season for Fort Lee, Washington scored another 13 points. Dashaun also made three shots from behind the arc as the younger Bridgemen team looks forward to carrying momentum from this win into their games coming up next week.

Keep an eye out for Washington. He may be lost in the shuffle of the seniors on the floor, but he sure has the ability to stand out as if he were a senior.