The Ames High School boys’ basketball team has not always drawn capacity crowds or played in major college arenas.

In the last three years, however, people have flocked to Ames High games, both home and away. They even had to move a home game against Waukegan (Ill.) to Hilton Coliseum to ensure there was enough room for all the fans. It will be the first time the Little Cyclones have ever played in their hometown university’s venue.

The major reason for the increased interest is senior forward and top ranked basketball prospect for the class of 2010, Harrison Barnes.

Barnes, who will be playing basketball for North Carolina next season, and his 11-year-old sister, Jourdan-Ashle, live with their mother, Shirley Barnes. Their father, former ISU star Ronnie Harris, left when they were young, leaving Shirley to raise the kids almost entirely on her own.

Barnes declined to comment on his father.

Due to his father’s absence, Shirley was instrumental in Barnes’ upbringing.

“My mom is a huge part of the person I am today,” Barnes said. “She just kept me grounded and humble, and I believe she’s raised me the right way.”

Shirley has tried to instill the virtues of honesty, respect and discipline in her son.

“It was probably the easiest job I ever had,” Shirley said. “I have not had any trouble. He is just a great young man.”

Although his father played basketball in college, Barnes’ love of the sport started with his basketball-enamored mother.

“In 1987, my first time ever having a VCR, I would always watch Michael [Jordan], and I just realized that he was a very special player and probably a once-in-a-lifetime player,” Shirley said. “I wanted my son to be able to see him play. So I started taping five years in advance. It was before he was born, before he was even thought of, but one day, if I had a son, he should watch these tapes.”

And that is what Barnes did. Almost from birth, he seemed to share his mother’s enthusiasm for the sport.

“That’s where my love for basketball started, just watching [Jordan] play ,” Barnes said. “That just really inspired me at a young age.”

Although basketball was his passion growing up, he was far from a one-dimensional individual. Barnes also played soccer for the Roosevelt Elementary School team in the Ames Parks and Recreation league. He played for seven seasons as a forward and never lost a match.

“He was definitely good at soccer,” said longtime friend and soccer teammate Seth Forsgren. “He was really fast and that helps, especially when you’re young.”

Barnes also found that he had some musical talent, playing the cello from fourth to seventh grade and taking up the saxophone in fifth grade, which he still plays in his free time.

“He was involved in everything we did in elementary school,” Forsgren said. “Band, orchestra, choir and all the sports and all the school activities, too.”

But the court was still where Barnes truly loved to be.

“I had Roosevelt Elementary right down the street, so whenever I’d go outside to play around, I’d go get some shots in,” Barnes said. “It’s just something I liked to do.”

While Barnes enjoyed playing basketball from the time he was 2 years old, he did not join an organized team until fourth grade, when he joined the Ames Wildcats but did not start. The next year, he had what Shirley called his first real basketball coach, Jafar Azmayesh.

Azmayesh was a student as Iowa State and the manager of the ISU men’s basketball team under then-coach Larry Eustachy .

“Larry’s son was a 10-year-old and he played on that same team as Harrison,” Azmayesh recalled. “So one day, Larry came in and said, ‘Hey, as one of your projects, here’s what I want you to do — you’ve got to go coach these guys.’”

Azmayesh and the Barnes family quickly became close as he became a role model for Barnes as well as his coach. Although he currently lives in Chicago, he is always there for Barnes if he needs some advice.

“Jafar has always been a good mentor to me,” Barnes said. “He is just somebody that has gone before me and can tell me how things are at different points of my life.”

It did not take Azmayesh long to realize Barnes was different. Although at the time his basketball skills did not separate him from the pack, Azmayesh was impressed with the way he carried himself.

“When you look across the room of people his age, he sticks out as having a maturity of a guy twice his age,” Azmayesh said. “So that first day, we showed up to nine 10-year-olds standing there for practice, their behavior, their actions, how they carried themselves, were all on par with what 10-year-olds do, except Harrison was more like a 17- or 18-year-old.”

Barnes again showed that maturity in sixth grade, when the Ames Wildcats went to nationals in Virginia Beach. James Wandling, his teammate at Ames High, was also on that sixth-grade team. He remembers swimming with the team while Barnes was in the gym working on his shot.

“That is something I’ve tried to embody on all my trips, just focus,” Barnes said. “When I’m on basketball trips, I try to keep it very professional and very focused on basketball. .”

Then in seventh grade, Barnes joined the All-Iowa Attack team, coached by former Cyclone great Jake Sullivan.

As a member of the All-Iowa Attack, Barnes had a gym he could use whenever he wanted, an opportunity he took ample advantage of. He also picked up a few good tips from Sullivan.

“Little things, such as how to work hard and what it takes to be a great player,” Barnes said.

Barnes then took those lessons and went to work, continuing to get better.

Vance Downs, the varsity boys’ basketball coach at Ames High, began hearing stories about Barnes and his talented class, but nothing really stood out for him until he saw him play.

When Barnes got to high school, he went out for the freshmen basketball team, but only got to practice with his class once.

“It was pretty evident that he was out of place in that practice,” Downs said. “So we brought him up to the varsity and we didn’t really know how that was going to go.”