There are a lot of perks to being a Victory Scholar, and I am thankful for every day I get to spend here in Ireland. These include the opportunity to live independently in Ireland, travel (around the country and to mainland Europe), continue my playing career post-collegiately, pursue a masters, and develop a great network of friends and relationships with the other Scholars and the SCL family. All of these aspects of the Victory Scholar Program are great and provide a feeling of personal benefit and enjoyment. However, these aspects of the program are primarily limited to the individual Scholar and what the Scholar gets out of the program, not what he or she is giving to the SCL organization or people (specifically the youth basketball community) in the area. With that being said, the most rewarding and satisfying part of the program for me is its ultimate purpose: working with and positively influencing kids in the Carlow community. Whether it’s a kid improving and starting to enjoy basketball for the first time, taking the initiative to ask questions on how to get better, or voicing his or her appreciation for my coaching, being able to witness my impact (even on the smallest scale) is what makes being a Victory Scholar meaningful.
It is also special when I am able to interact with the kids outside of the scheduled training sessions. Coaching and weekly interactions with the school kids that I work with have slowly developed into relationships that extend beyond the 90-minute basketball sessions. For example, several of the boys I coach at Tyndall College (see “Pure Joy” blog) attend most of my home games on the weekends. I’ll chat with them before and after the game and can always count on honest feedback from them on how I played. They’ll usually give me a grade on a scale of 1-10, which often depends on how many 3 pointers or dunks I had in the game, and not much else. I also frequently see some of the kids I coach in the town center and all of them (even some of the shy ones) will call me by name with a smile on their face. The connections I have been able to make with some of the kids are what give me the opportunity to positively influence others and contribute to the betterment of young people and not just myself over the course of these 9 months. I look forward to deepening these relationships with the time I have left.
