No matter what stage you’re at in this game of life, your experience in the present moment can be sensed as a puzzle. The pieces making up your current riddle are comprised of past happenings, and your primary goal, as a conscious soul, is to, over and over, formulate these fragments into a polished work of art.
Whenever you complete one of your many personal collages, you’re gifted the opportunity to stare at it with the utmost pride, as you know that each slice in the sculpture played a vital role in the allurement that dwells in the final product.
In recent times, I was fortunate to gain further clarity on how one of my artistic productions received its first handful of morsels. Following the release of an updated version of my book,
Trust the Grind, I was interviewed by my alma mater, UMass. In the chat, I was asked about my time as an undergraduate and how one fortuitous decision made ahead of my senior year influenced some sweet happenings in the opening chapter of my professional career. The publication was featured in the school’s
Flagship Focus Newsletter (November 2025 Edition) and can be found on a site owned by the UMass Amherst Foundation. (
Link to Article)
When I first arrived on campus as a wide-eyed freshman, the vision for my future was hazy. To dissipate the fog, I leaned on my passion for sports and did so by attempting to mimic the great athletes to the best of my ability. While walking the same paths that Julius Erving walked, I carried a competitor-like mindset by focusing on my studies, exercising on a routine basis, reading books on how to become successful, and consuming a substantial amount of sports-based content for motivation. In my eyes, due to the nature of their craft, standout pros embody self-belief and personal achievement in a way that is incomparable to players in other vocations. To be considered an exceptional professional athlete, one must walk the walk and talk the talk over and over again, all while the masses keep their eyes glued on them. Their output is tracked on a regular basis, and they participate in leagues where countless wannabe contestants work day and night to try and snatch their shine. There’s nothing like sports, which is why the bulk of the culture is obsessed with watching individuals perform them at a high level.
By the time I was a senior, I had developed a strong growth-focused regimen and added to it by taking on a new pursuit. This quest came in the form of sports writing. As I mentioned in the interview, in an effort to separate myself from the stack, I began publishing sports-specific blogs so that by the time I strutted across the stage at graduation in the coming spring I would walk away from the university with more than just a diploma.
When I reached that moment in May, even though everyone else in my class was jumping for joy following the fulfillment of our drawn-out and strenuous educational odyssey, all I could think about was sports content. That’s because I was in the midst of the interview process with ESPN for one of their sports content researcher openings. The work that I had put in during my last year as a Minuteman—100+ sports blogs centered around MLB, NBA, NFL, NCAAF, and NCAAB—paid off, as it led me to a phone call with one of ESPN’s recruiters. That snowballed into another discussion, which led to additional chats with different employees at the mothership.
My journey from then to now is laid out to near perfection in the piece, and I’m very grateful to have partaken in this publication—not just because the university and I created a post to inspire an up-and-comer but because it has allowed me to comprehend the intricate details within one of my patchworks. In this analogy, with my book serving as the end result, some of the major pieces would be: a love for sports, eagerness to attend a school that had some athletic history, desire to model my lifestyle after world-class performers, put forth the effort by writing about sports, be blessed with the opportunity to create sports content on a national level due to this effort, and possess the confidence to execute on my own in an environment that I had sensed more than most. Life’s domino effects are reactions that, when played right, are realized in cinematic-like ways.
Thank you, UMass!
P.S. Even though we are struggling on the gridiron, due to your critical support along my personal expedition, I will always rock with our squads!
