My Dad, he works for the Indianapolis Airport. He was a basketball player coming up. He played in the army. My Mom is a beautician and an air traffic controller. Both are just regular hard working people.
I played football, basketball and baseball at Pike. I just kind of got into baseball. Not too many played baseball in my family. My mom did a lot of softball. They didn’t want me coming home after school. They wanted me to stay active. So I picked up baseball. Actually coming up… basketball was my favorite. With my Dad playing in the army always had time to train me. Teach me different things. Football, it just kind of came about, like I said my parents didn’t want me coming home they wanted me to get involved in stuff at school. I picked up football and before I knew it, it was my best sport.
Indiana State was a good pick for me. Coach Miles gave me the opportunity to go to school and get a degree while playing football. It was close to home. My family would be able to see me play. My brother loves to come to my games and watch me play. So I wanted to give my family the opportunity to experience the college athletics atmosphere. Like I said, Coach Miles gave me the opportunity so I took full advantage of it.
I love everything about Indiana State. I would offer Indiana State to anybody. I think the professors are good, the coaching staff, the administrators. Everything’s going in the right direction. Everything’s positive around here. I really love it.
I study psychology with a minor in African American studies. I plan to go to law school. I picked up philosophy and different things. I took a lot of political science and legal studies courses. Just working. I know law school is going to be heavy but those are my plans.
Outside of football we don’t have a lot of time, but we make the best of your time. My favorite thing to do is hang with my brother. He’s like one of my best friends. Me and him do a lot together. He comes up and stays with me every once in awhile. He comes to the games. He’s always at the games, He’s a big sports fan. He can tell you anything about any team… college or pro, every sport you can think of. He didn’t play many sports coming up. He played a little football in middle school. He’s older than me.
My favorite song? I don’t know, just anything to get me going. I don’t really have a favorite song or favorite style of music. A lot of rap music and R&B. I like a lot of old music. Hanging with my Dad and brother I picked up on a lot of old rap, old R&B a lot of different stuff.
My favorite food. Probably pasta, they feed to us so much playing sports you get use to every kind of spaghetti and pasta there is. It just becomes your favorite.
My friends are a couple of guys I went to high school with and played ball with. They no longer play but they do go to Indiana State. I still hang with them. A couple of my best friends are actually from a travel basketball team that I played on when I was in elementary. To this day those are my two best friends. Those two guys,… I didn’t go to school with them. We just played travel ball together. Always just kind of hung together coming up.
On game day… I call my Dad every morning, prior to game, prior to team meals whatever. We get a prayer, we pray for the players, for the coaching staff, my team, myself, the other team… make sure they travel safe. Prevent all major injuries and stuff. I do that, then I just like to listen to my music. I make sure I talk to my Mom, my brother, my girlfriend, everybody. Get them out of the way so I can get into my own zone and get my music going and just focus on the game.
No, no superstitions, just two pair of socks every game. Gotta stack 2 pair of socks. Bob Elson keeps us in good gear… makes sure I’m taken care of.
The defense is a little different this year. Just more intense. People flying around. We’re more aggressive this year. We feel like we have more talent on the field. More athletes. We had guys last year we red shirted, who are really going to step up this year and be factors on our team. A lot of guys played their first year last year. And we have a lot of guys going into their third year like me, Alex Sewell, C.J. Cook. Guys who played a whole lot of games, Aaron Archie is coming back off a big year last year. I think we should be that much more fine tuned, use to playing with each other. Use to college atmosphere and we’ll be ready to go.
A lot of unity with the team. We hang together a lot actually. By the time we get to the cafeteria after practice there is nobody in there but us. So we just have a lot of fun together. We hang out at each other’s house all the time. A lot of video games and stuff. So we know each other pretty well.
We expect to do big things. The game experience…there is nothing like game experience. We have a lot more than a lot of other teams though. Other teams aren’t forced to play their freshmen, their sophomores right away. They usually red shirt them. We had a positive and a negative with playing all our guys that way. The positive was that we got the experience. We know from now on we’re ready. The negative was at the time we didn’t know what to expect. We just kind of just went out there and did what we were asked. We’re the men on the field now.
Actually a lot of my leader qualities come from my sister. Being the oldest of three– me, my brother, and my sister. She took care of us. She made sure we were in line and that’s
what its all about. Knowing when to be tough and when to back off and have a conversation with a guy. When to push him and know you can get more out of him and when to back off and know he needs up-lifted and not yelled at. Then just going out and performing and doing the things that you want everybody else to do and follow suit. Leading by example is probably one of the biggest things. I try and get into my playbook and learn everybody’s spot so I can be there to help guys. Even though it’s not my spot, as a leader, that’s just kind of the things you do. So that when I am verbal I actually know how to send them in the right direction on what to say what to do.
I expect to win. I expect to play hard. In the past we had some games get out of hand with the score and stuff. I expect us to be tough and compete in every aspect. I expect our coaches are that much better. They have been here that much longer. They know us so I expect everybody across the board to be better this year and put us in a position to win. In the fourth quarter, I expect us to be in a position to win every game. Everything has to be moving forward and growing. I feel at this point we’ve grown enough to make positive gains in the right direction.
I need ISU supporters, alumni and former players to know I respect everything they have done. I try to portray Indiana State the way they would like to see it portrayed to the public eye on the field. Everything positive they’ve done we really appreciate it.
I’m going to play hard and do everything I can to win… help this team. Whether, it’s getting my playbook and teaching someone else. Whether
it’s playing hard day in and day out, offense, defense, special teams. Anything I can do to help this team win. That’s my job as a football player.
As a team we are really trying, we really are working to change things, to make a difference. I see a lot of positive support from the community. I’ve seen growth in the administrators, the locker room, the field, the fan base, the website. Everybody is really backing us, now it’s time for us to give something back to them.
