DU All Athlete Meeting/Ethan Fisher's Seminar

Yello!!!!!!!!!!! So yesterday was our super-duper-fantastic All Athlete Meeting here at DU that all the athletes look forward to going to....ha. :) Ya know they talk about what we shouldn't do or else we'll get into trouble, all of our media stuff that you can keep up with on like 29,145 million different social networking sites, and they also hand out prizes if you answer some trivia questions. (ugh, fyi: our soccer coach is from England...not from Scotland...oopsies). Anywho, towards the end of the seminar, yeah that time when we thought it was over and we could get out of there, there was a man that grabbed the mic and started talking. We weren't really sure what he was going to talk about and then he said something like "over the next half hour" and we all went ugh! But he started talking about his past as a basketball player. Right out of high school he had all these amazing opportunities to go play for some small community schools in preparation for possibly going D1. He got to college and started to party, heavily and then he started not going to class. It all started going down hill fast with the partying and then eventually, drugs. He flunked out of so many schools and was on this roller coaster for years. The drinking got so bad that eventually moved back home to try and straighten up. He got things under control, somewhat, and then one night his friends wanted him to come over and drink and hang out. Sadly, he ended up getting so wasted that he blacked out, got into a car, and hit someone. He woke up at the hospital in the morning having no recollection of what had happened the night before. He ended up taking someones life. Ethan ended up doing time for what he had done. Even after he got out, Ethan wanted to still try and play basketball. He eventually found somewhere that would give him a chance but he couldn't go on the road with them when they had to leave for games because of the terms of his parole. He said that not being with his team and having the chance to "go to war with them" was the worst feeling ever. I'm so glad for the opportunity to listen to him and his story. As a student-athlete, many of us are aware of the consequences of our actions right from the get go. We know that if you don't get your work done, you don't play. And sometimes, it comes to that. You might miss a test or study table and become ineligible for a game or you got caught drinking once when you weren't supposed to. Well that's a chance when we didn't get to go to war with our teammates. It made me think maybe sometimes we take for granted the opportunities to play the game that we love so much.

“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
-Charles Dickens