Bio
How I started:
I started at the age of 16, having not played Basketball before. I was going to play Football with my friends and a coach spotted me, mentioned my height, and asked if I wanted to give it a go. Right there we played on the park, and I enjoyed it, although I wasn’t totally interested in the sport before I began! I played in a 3 on 3 tournament and enjoyed playing with them regularly until we won the U16 national championship, at this point I was putting a lot of energy into training and loving Basketball, and I was offered a scholarship in Iowa, and then I transferred to a school in Texas to finish my scholarship!
My Greatest Achievement:
My greatest achievement is winning the BBL League championship and the playoffs with Leicester Riders, and also winning the BBL Cup in London Lions. This was very prestigious as these are some of the biggest achievements in British Basketball, especially the playoffs as that is the top 8 teams from the league. I have also played in the FIBA Europe Cup, and the Basketball Champions league. I remember watching all of these games on YouTube and the realisation of being there in that moment was very overwhelming and surreal, especially seeing a lot of the logos and branding around the arenas!
My Greatest Challenge:
My greatest challenge was bouncing back from being cut from a team for the first time. Everything had been plain sailing and I was on a great path for success. However, at the top level, with so much talent, it’s easy for you to become disposable because everybody wants that place too. It took longer mentally than I thought it was going to after this, and I think in retrospect it took me a whole Basketball season to really get to grips with it, even though I had transferred to a new team swiftly.
My Hobbies:
In my free time I like to work on my youth empowerment business, because there are so many people that could have done what I’ve done, and I want to show people that their dreams can be bigger than them, and the mission is to inspire a billion young people to chase their dreams and make the most of every moment they’re given. I love business, growing up my family was into business, and a lot of my role models are business people, which is why I pursue a lot of these extra curricular interests like Project Elevate, and my own Basketball team; Peterborough City Basketball Club. Finally, I would also say that one of my hobbies is being a fun dad as I have two children ages two and one, a lot of the time I’ll find whatever it is that we can do to be the fun dad!
My Future Aspirations:
In the future I am hoping to be known as a motivational and empowering person, with the wisdom to give that will allow people to see that their dreams are not bigger than them, and that anybody can chase them! I would also love to see my Basketball club thrive and have a men’s and junior team playing at the national level, and having a thousand children participating at the club, playing Basketball. Seeing these fresh faces be able to learn and grow at the club and find their own scholarships and paths will be extremely rewarding!