Cley Perrett

The Game He Came Back To

A third-year player rebuilds around a love that survived time away.

Cley Perrett was in his mom’s basketball camps before preschool. His older brother was there to train. Cley was there to keep up.

The game belonged to his childhood so early that it’s difficult to identify a life before it. Gym time was family time. Playing became something he expected to keep doing.

His mom was running camps for his older brother, and Cley was already training with them before he had a preschool schedule. Basketball was not something he needed an elaborate introduction to. It was there, being played by people he knew, waiting for him to join in.

That makes the later time away significant. Leaving a sport that has accompanied nearly every stage of childhood changes more than a training routine. When Cley returned, he wanted the familiar feeling of being a player again, while confronting the reality that familiar skills needed work.

Then he spent two years away from basketball to serve a church mission.

The experience mattered to him, but returning to the sport brought a difficult realization: skills and progress he had worked hard to build needed rebuilding. A game that had always felt familiar demanded patience again.

Now in his third year of eligibility with the Lightning, Cley understands consistency from both sides—the years spent accumulating work and the effort required to regain ground after an extended break.

The mission was a commitment he chose. So was returning to basketball afterward. Making room in his life for both meant accepting a setback in the development of his game, and then choosing the work required to rebuild. Losing that progress was difficult. The feeling of playing again helped make rebuilding it worthwhile.

“Nothing is quite like the feeling of being on the court,” he says.

That feeling gives consistency a reason. It is easier to talk about discipline in the abstract than to practice it while comparing yourself with a version of your game you remember. Cley has a reason to tolerate the repetition: he still loves the place it lets him return to.

His advice is concise.

“Consistency is the only way to be successful, which is simple but not easy.”

That distinction does plenty of work. Most players know what practice requires. Doing it repeatedly, especially when the old version of your game feels a step ahead of the current one, is another matter.

What keeps Cley moving is the feeling of being on the court. He describes a pure love for the game, something that doesn’t need a new incentive every week.

His dad has helped shape that approach. Supportive throughout his life, and dedicated in both work and family, he offers an example of giving full effort to whatever matters.

Outside basketball, Cley heads outdoors: skiing, climbing, hiking, cliff jumping. Nature gives him space to reset. Some parts of a person remain dependable through changing seasons.

Basketball has been with him since those first camps. Coming back required him to earn his rhythm again. He keeps working because the game still feels worth returning to.