My Passion

I like telling people what to do. I like it even more when I tell people what to do, they listen, and achieve something or are successful. For the first year after I decided I wanted to be a coach, the only explanation why was because of my boys. Those three teams are some of the only memories I carry with me from Kansas. It’s been two years since I’ve coached them, but there isn’t a day that passes that doesn’t have them in it.

My experiences with them made my life. The start of my sophomore year and my foundation coursework for ACE has really opened my eyes and my mind to how bad I want this. Last year, I loved my classes, and I did well and enjoyed learning, but never wanted to go. My new classes are at 7:30 and 8 in the morning, times my eyes aren’t used to seeing the sun in the sky. Anybody that know me, knows I’m not a morning person. That getting me out of bed for classes, from elementary school on up, was harder than hell--if it even happened.

For the first time in my life, I’m excited to get up and go to class. Not that it’s any easier TO wake up, but my classes give me the drive to get out of bed. I want to learn.

While I sit in these classes, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be. My passion truly is basketball. I’m smart enough to do almost anything I want to do. The hardest part of this so far, has been trying to help those understand why coaching is for me, as opposed to something of THEIR choice.

It kills me when the people I love don’t try to convince me to change my path. I know they love me and they just want me to have a prosperous life, and I don’t want to negate that at all. To me, I know they think coaching is a fall-back, or an easy path to take. I’ve never thought that at all. When my friends make fun of my classes and how “easy” they are, they don’t understand that each class means more to mean than any amount of money the classes their taking for their big, fancy majors ever will.

I have friends in engineering, communications, pre-med, biology, and every other major. They talk about how much money they’ll make in the future. What I take more pride in is that not one of them talk about how much they love their classes, or that they want to go. Yeah, they’ll make more money in the future, but I don’t think they’ll have a career they can truly feel passionate about. I will, and that’s what I hope to portray.