Senior Spotlight: Jacob McClung

Indiahoma High School Warrior Jacob McClung plays wing, small forward and power forward on the basketball team.

He also competes in esports but has played baseball and cross country in the past.

In esports, McClung competes in Rainbow Six Siege.

“Me and my friends played this very specific game when we were little kids, and we promised each other if we got an esports team and that game was an option, we would play on the same team, and since we were seniors, we decided to do it,” he said.

McClung said the team is pretty good at the game.

“It's really fun because it's like a childhood dream,” he said. “You spend hours with your friends playing this game, and then you have a chance to actually like compete against other people that have also played the game. You know, it's fun.”

Although his friends are spread out and play online, there is an esports room at Indiahoma High School for people to watch.

McClung said his greatest accomplishment in basketball was during his sophomore year.

“We were ranked number seven in the state, and we were the first Class B school in two years to beat Fort Cobb, so that was pretty cool. We won. We got second place in county,” he said. “We lost by like two or four points to Frederick, who's a 3A school, so us being Class B it was pretty good, and I think they were ranked 15th that year for class 3A. Then we won Best of the Southwest my sophomore year, too. That tournament in Granite, that was a good memory because we beat Carnegie in the finals by two points and we got on Indian Sports News for that because pretty much our whole team was native.”

McClung has always enjoyed basketball and has always had goals to do well in the sport.

“I would go outside and shoot around on our hoop that could lower so I could feel like LeBron for a couple hours,” he said. “And I just would play on the playground with my cousins and my brothers, and my brother actually made it to state for Indiahoma, and I was little. I was like second or third grade when he was a senior, but I remember going and watching that, and I was like, ‘Man, I want to make it to state one day,’ like, you know, so it kind of just became a dream I guess.”

McClung said he’s going to miss the people he’s spent time with while attending Indiahoma Public Schools.

“I'm going to miss the family aspect of school because especially like this is a small school, and in my class, 10 out of the 15 of us have been here since pre-k. So, we spent eight hours a day together since we were four, so it's kind of like moving out for the first time you know it's going to be weird,” he said.

McClung goes to the Great Plains Technology Center in Lawton, Oklahoma for electrical, but plans on going to college to be a history teacher.

“I've just always liked history. I don't know why. On YouTube, I watch reaction videos, and this one dude reacted to this channel called Oversimplified and…after I found them, I kind of just snowballed into loving history,” he said.

McClung said he’s been a teacher on the court and said it will translate well to the classroom.

To keep in touch with his heritage, McClung goes to powwows and teaches himself the Comanche Language.

“I started gourd dancing when I was 13. My dad joined the CIVA, and it was his first time gourd dancing he asked if I wanted to with him, I said, ‘Sure,’ and I've been doing it ever since,” he said. “I go to cultural stuff probably every other month, just the ones that I see that I feel like going to, you know, but I also am constantly I've been trying to teach myself Comanche through the songs and those little packets you can get from the tribe I've been on trying, but it's hard it's a hard language.”

He said he wanted people to know that no matter what they’re going through, God and Jesus will always be there for them.