Junior guard Nick Coval of the Parkland High School boys basketball team started the new year off right and achieved a career milestone. In a home victory over East Stroudsburg North back on Jan. 6, Coval eclipsed the 1,000 career point mark in his third year with the varsity program.

It’s a milestone that he can be proud of and take a minute to appreciate with how it came. It doesn’t happen for very many players in their four-year high school careers, so it’s something very successful.

“It meant a lot to me,” said Coval. “I’ve spent a lot of time and put in a lot of work to get to this point, so it felt really good. It also felt great to do it in front of my family.”

It was a bit of luck to achieve the goal at home in front of his family and friends as the schedule around the game was heavy on road contests. The game prior on January 3 was at Central Catholic, and then there were three consecutive road contests following that game with ES North.

“It definitely felt really good to do it in front of the home crowd,” Coval said. “It was a packed gym and it was youth night so it was a special moment. Obviously to do it in front of my family is a memory I will never forget.”

Coval has also enjoyed the team aspects of the game and being a part of a Trojans program that he has been successful with, winning both the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and District 11 6A championships last season.

“It’s awesome to be a part of this team, especially with all of the great players that played before me,” said Coval. “I’ve known [head] coach [Andy] Stephens for a long time now and he’s a great coach so I’m very fortunate to be a part of Parkland basketball.”

With that milestone past him, Coval wants to continue to get better as an individual and teammate and help Parkland win more games.

“Individually, I just want to get better every day,” Coval said. “If I do that good things will happen automatically. As a team, we just want to win as much as possible while having fun in the process.”