Rick i played only baseball as a kid and made the little league All-Star traveling team but chose to stop in High School. What happened was when i went into middle school my grandfather had got out of prison (for high level financial crimes where he worked at Westrn Union). I was in 6th grade at the time and had never met him before. Around this time at 13 years old i was getting in alot of trouble with older kids from my neighborhood. By age 14 i was already smoking weed and hanging out with kids who probably looking back were bad influences on me. In the middle of 8th grade i had been arrested and my mom found my stash of drugs so she sent me to live with my Dad in Maryland. My Dad was concerned that i was involved in selling drugs so he took me to meet his dad (Grandpop) who had just got out of prison at that time. (1993)
My Grandfather was from Philadelphia and had played basketball at Roman Catholic High School which is famous on a national level for their program. Up to this point in my life i was into skateboarding and baseball so when he seen that i was 6'1'' 185lbs at age 14 and could already dunk in 8th grade he took me under his wing because he knew i could get a basketball scholarship to college. My mom missed me so i moved back home so i came to start my first year of High School up here. My Freshman year was a total disaster because i was not going to school so i could hang out with the older kids in my neighborhood and smoke weed. I could not play basketball because i failed almost every single class. So after my freshman year (1994) i went back to live with my Dad in Maryland again. That was the summer my Grandfather had enough and made me get a job and play basketball everyday when i got off work. I really got my shit together that summer so i wen't back home to live with my Mom (I also have a good step Dad) and start my sophomore year (1995-96). I got really good grades that year 3.5 gpa and wen't to school everyday. I was starting on the JV team and sitting the bench on the Varsity team my sophomore season. That summer i went to a camp run by Mike Brey who was the Head coach of University of Delaware at that time and is now the head coach of Notre Dame. Junior year was a breakthrough year for me (1997). I started Varsity the entire season and was scoring 15-20 point's a game. Because i had got arrested at age 14 i did not get to go to Catholic School with most of my friends at that point in my life. So when i say that i started Varsity my entire Junior year and was having 20 point games i was doing that playing for a Public High school where i was one of only 2 white teens in a basketball program of 45-50 inner city black teens with all black coaches on the freshman, JV and Varsity levels.
When senior year (1998) came around my ego was to big because i had such a good junior season. All i wanted to do at that point in my life was party and have sex with girls. Half way through my senior season i got a girlfriend and missed to much school so i failed off the team...
Edit: In retrospect i can't blame my girlfriend for causing me to fail off the team during my final year of high school in the middle of my 12th grade season. Truth is i had failed one of my main requirement classes to graduate as a senior and that's the reason i could not play.
Once i failed off the team and was done playing basketball i stopped going to school. If not for a major intervention from my parents and grandparents i would have never graduated High School. Lucky for me other coaches in my state knew who i was and the Athletic Director from my High School had got college recruiting letters for me. My friends from the Catholic school that i could not go to because i had been arrested at 14 had their coach who i was suppose to originally play for introduce me to my first college coach the summer after my senior year in high school. (1998-99)
So my first year in college because i had done so bad my senor year in High School i had to (Redshirt) that season. (2000)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirt_(college_sports)
I got my grades up during my redshirt year and my coach had me on a basketball scholarship for my next two college seasons.
Then when i turned 21 (US legal age to go in bars/pubs/nightclubs) I started to hang out with my main group of childhood friends who did not go to college. All they wanted to do was get drunk, fight people and have sex with girls from the bars/clubs so i started getting in trouble again. By this time my grandfather went back to West Palm Beach Florida where my Uncle (Dad's brother) lived. So my uncle called me and told me i could move to South Florida and play my final two college seasons of basketball at Atlantic and live off campus with him. I couldn't handle all the pressure of still hanging out with my friends from my early teen age years and playing college basketball in Delaware. Plus i was trying to deal with my high school girlfriend who i was with all the time. So after that phone call from my uncle i packed up all my summer clothes and moved to South Florida because one of my best friends i grew up with was one of the top recruited Football (Not Soccer) players in the nation and had a full ride to University of Miami and would later go on to play in the NFL. So in my 20's i lived in South Florida during the winter time off and on with my Uncle who was in West Palm and my friend who was in Miami. I met a girl down there when i was in college so i would stay at her condo alot also. Then in the summertime i would come home and live with my mom and work basketball camp every summer at University of Delaware. When i was working the camps at U of D i met a young white dude from Pennsylvania who played against Kobe Bryant. He had come from a good program in PA and told me that he was getting the head coaching job at my old high school. Where he was from in PA he played for an all white (Private) school so him coming here to coach was a major culture shock. I had to give him alot of advice about coaching at a my old high school because he would be dealing with black kids from the ghetto who carried guns on the team.
When my Mom's parents died i was age 26(Grandpop) and my Aunt who teaches at Duke took my Grandmom to North Carolina. I guess i need to add to this story that my Grandparents left a nice older home that my Grandfather had already paid off since he was an engineer for Dupont. I moved back from South Florida to the North East and i'm typing this from that home right now which i live. Anyway to make a long story short the guy from Pennsylvania who i met working basketball camps at University of Delaware in my early 20's found out that i was back home living in the North East by a mutual friend who was the gym teacher at my old High School. So when i was age 28 they called me and offered me a High School coaching job. That's pretty much it. I never wanted to be a High School basketball coach or ever applied for a job with the school district or anything like that. It's just something that happened because of people i knew. All i had to do was get a police background check done to get paid. Everything was good because the charge i had as a 14 year old was dropped off my record when i became an adult at 18. The only thing that sucks is i have to stop smoking weed for a month every winter because i have to take a drug test when being paid by the state for the school district.
This Picture is from last season (age 32) before practice with some of the kids from the Freshman and Junior Varsity.
