ROBB TODD

BERRY HOPES TO GO FROM SUPER KMART TO PRO BASKETBALL 

  
By Robb Todd  
Originally published June 23, 1996 by the Burlington (N.C.) Times-News

Inside the Super Kmart  Center on Huffman Mill Road there are 12 closed-circuit cameras.  And in a dark room in the back of the store, Andrew Berry can zoom in on any customer on one of the 20 monitors.  

Kmart calls this “loss control,” sterile language for “security.”  

For nearly a year, the 6-foot-6, 205-pound Berry has worked in loss control and supplemented his income by playing – what else – a basketball player in television commercials and training videos. He said has done ads for AT&T, Sprite and GlaxoWellcome, and will be shooting a spot for BellSouth with the Charlotte Hornets’ Muggsy Bogues. He has also auditioned for movies.  

Three months from now, though, the 28-year-old hopes to be drafted Sept. 17 by a team in the Continental Basketball Association and leave Super Kmart’s loss control to someone else.  

“This is my final chance, so I need to be physically and mentally ready,” said Berry, who was a standout basketball player during his senior year in 1985 at Charlotte’s Myers Park  High School. “If I don’t do it now, when I get older I won’t be satisfied.”  

Berry left Charlotte after his senior year for Glenville State in West Virginia, but his stay was brief.  

“Andy Berry is applying for the CBA draft?” said longtime Granville State coach Gary Nottingham, who added that he didn’t think Berry played a game before he left school. “He had some talent now. If he would have stayed, I don’t think there is any question he would have had a good career here. He was a 6-7, 6-8 kid who could run the floor and had a little shooting ability. If he would have stayed he would have been a good player in (the West Virginia Conference).”  

What-might-have-beens are really ghosts that haunt athletes at night. And Berry has his share.  

“Man, I have a lot of regrets,” Berry said. “When I got involved in commercials, I thought that would help, but it doesn’t provide the same level of fulfillment. And I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think I had a chance.”  

Berry left Glenville  State in 1987 to play on a Greek national team that toured the United States playing exhibition games. Berry has also played for the Fayetteville Dawgs in the short-lived Global Basketball League in 1993. And what Berry might have been had he stayed in school, he said, is part of the motivation for his comeback after more than 1 1/2-year layoff because of a stress fracture in his left hip.  

But he said he has already worked out for CBA teams in Florida and Michigan.  

“He’s awfully old to be going into something like that,” Nottingham said. “A lot of times when you get away from the game competitively, you get a little disillusioned. Scoring 40 at the Y is not like scoring 40 against someone who can play. But I wish him well.”  

Berry said he doesn’t play at the YMCA. He said he plays in a pro-am league in Charlotte and is on a team with Bogues, Hornets sharp-shooter Del Curry and former Wake  Forest player Delaney Rudd.  

Rusty Wiggs, Berry’s agent, said he thinks Berry’s chances of getting drafted are good.  

“He’s got good size and he’s going to training camp next week,” Wiggs said. “He’s working out and doing all the right things to get prepared for this.”  

And even if Berry isn’t drafted and doesn’t land with a team as a free agent, he might have exorcised the what-might-have-beens from his psyche.  

“If I don’t go anywhere, I’ll just keep doing commercials and movie auditions,” Berry said, “and because I tried, I’ll be satisfied with myself.”  

Call it mental “loss control.”