First of all, I appreciate you for opening this link and actually wanting to read my stories. I am going to be honest with you all, I have been hesitant about posting my written blogs because I feel like my writing skills aren’t the best. Instead, I have been creating YouTube videos to try and show you what’s going on over here through photos. But, now it’s time for some words and I’m going to start with my friend Flinn.
Flinn is full of life, happy as ever! He is mature, has a farm, oh and he’s only ten years old. Ya I know, weird, why am I friends with a 10 year old…? I’ll tell you why, because Flinn doesn’t care about me being an American, he just cares that he is able to watch our games and we can talk about whatever on is our minds So here is how I met Flinn…
During my time here I play on two basketball teams. One is the national league team for LIT (Limerick Institute Technology) and the other is a college team for LIT. I first met Flinn at my college game in November. We played against our cross-town rivals, University of Limerick, at their gym. The game was intense, fast paced, and loud! We had a decent crowd for a college game (mostly our friends and friends of those friends). I also noticed my teammate, Johnny from our national league team, came to our college game. Now Johnny is a big guy almost 6’8, I saw him instantly. Right next to him was this little guy maybe 1/3 of Johnny in height. I knew Johnny didn’t have kids so I was thinking to myself, “who is that kid?”
Our team end up winning the game by like 10-15 points, making us 4-0 of the season. After the game our friends came down to the court, said congrats and took some pictures together. Johnny comes over to me and says “congrats Drew! This is my little brother Flinn”. Now I’ll admit I didn’t really hear Johnny well so I said “what’s up FINN?” And Flinn told me straight up, “my name is Flinn not Finn!” I immediately apologized saying, “sorry I thought your name was like the Irish WWE wrestler ‘Finn Balor’”…he said, “I know I get that all the time”. So I asked him if he watched wrestling and he shouted with excitement, YES!!! Now if you know me you know I love professional wrestling, I jokingly tell people if I’m not playing basketball I’m usually watching wrestling. Finn and I talked about our favorite WWE stars and even a few of our favorite matches. We ended up talking for like 10 minutes before Johnny had to go and take Flinn home. We said bye to each other and I thanked the two of them for coming to my game. I didn’t know when I was going to see Flinn again, but I was definitely happy that I had met him.
Fast forward about 3-4 weeks from that moment. I come back to Ireland from spending Christmas with my family back home. We have a game the exact day I get back…oh great! Anyway I get to the game about an hour before tip-off and who do I see? I see Flinn! He comes over and we sit next to each other and talk about Christmas Break. I told him everything I did like having Christmas dinner, going to a WWE show in Madison Square Garden, and hanging out with my friends. He told me the gifts he received, what he did over the holiday, and the animals he has on his farm. I swear to you, we talked for about thirty minutes. I had teammates asking me to get changed and I was like hold on because this kid was amazing me with his knowledge, wit, humor, excitement, and just overall willingness to get to know me. He knew I was there to play basketball, but I explained to him the deeper meaning of why I was in Ireland, which is to get my masters and impact kids’ lives through sport.
The game was so exciting, my teammate Conal hit a game winning three pointer at the buzzer! What a way to end a game! The team storms the court and celebrates the victory among each other. In this game I had about 6 points, if that. There is a rule of Basketball Ireland that only allows one American on the court at any time of play. The other American on my team is Matt and he is unreal, this guy hits shots from the three point line that are crazy and hard to explain if you never saw him play. With that, he plays majority of the game because we need that scoring and offensive leadership.
Now if you stuck around this long… thank you because the story gets better about my friend Flinn. After the game, Flinn comes over to me and says, “Drew you played awesome. I don’t know much about basketball, but I know from watching you, you were doing the right things”. And I responded, “thanks Flinn but what do you mean?” And he was like, “well I saw you talking on defense, cheering on your teammates, being positive, and being a leader during the entire time you’ve been in this gym.” Now in my head I’m like “WOW how can this 10 year old kid see all of this and know I only scored 6pts, and still think I had the greatest performance in basketball??” He told me, “it doesn’t matter how many points you score you still have an impact on the game.” That conversation right there made it all worth it… right in that moment I knew that points didn’t matter, what mattered was the impact I was leaving on my team and kids I come in contact with like Flinn. This kid made me so happy, I wanted to tell you all about him. So we took a photo together and this is the photo you see in the beginning of this blog. This is my 10-year-old friend Flinn and he is one of the nicest, funniest, smartest, and coolest 10 year olds I know!!
